Mark

I got a pair from Jack too. I have not put them on yet because of the other problems that I've had. I had plenty of time to wait.

How can you tell the difference between the Bravo one and the XR caps? Is it something you can measure. I have the caps at home and the boat is 70 miles away in the shop. I only have four months if I need to exchange them.

When the cap on my drive broke, the metal parts fell into the gears destroyed the entire drive. Its worth the money to get the aftermarket caps.

Roger, I guess I could go into a lot of detail here, but when the first top caps arrived Dick (Mr. Gadgets) did a quick comparison check and found that they were standard Bravo Caps. Nice caps, but the wrong ones. Anyway, I gave them the bennefit of the doubt and tried to work it out with them, and over time I just told them to cancel the order---not worth the grief. Of course that was pretty minor compared to later stuff.

Mark

Someday I would like to hear that story but not on here.

What was the difference between the Bravo One and XR cap? Is the bolt pattern or bearing size different?

Q Storm,
The difference is in the bearing. The standard Bravo cap has a taller bearing race. I find out later that.. they can be used. After we put ITS caps on Marks drives. I found out that you can put the smaller XR bearing race on a standard cap and it will clear the gear and work. Sorry I didnt find this out till later Mark. The nice thing about the ITS cap is that it has a steel tower in it. I am running one on mine drive.
One thing to make sure of with the caps that jack built is that the surface that the bearing race (shim) sits in, is parallel and the right distance from the cap mounting surface. A normal Merc XR cap is .255" down from the cap mounting surface. The standard cap is .265" from the cap surface. I have seen the numbers all over the place. IMHO, any new cap should be measured and the setup shimmed accordingly to set the proper gear lash.
I hope this helps.

Dick

ITS cap is a real good cap, though I have been using MAX MACHINE WORX caps this summer. MAX caps must weight 5 or 6 pounds and is 2" thick. Its machined out of billet and has a chrome moly tower. Comes w/ ARP stainless stud kit.You can get an awesome drive shower kit too.Sutphen30 and myself are very impressed w/ MAX goodies.

Dick

That does help. I'll measure and match the step when I replace them.

Thanks

Roger

Glad to be of help Roger!

Dick, you all healed up yet? When can we do dinner at 84 East?

Lot better than I was.. 98% normal.. if normal is normal..
We should look at a nite in the next couple of weeks.. now that summer has returned..
I'll talk to the better half and give you a call.
Dick

The issue with thicker caps is heat retention and ease of cooling, this was brought up to me by my brother (engineer!).
His point was;
A. It might be harder to cool a stainless cap because thermal retention in stainless is better than aluminium.
B. Expansion between the stainless cap and aluminium housing will be different and might bring forth loosening issues after use.
C. The last thing he mentioned was that since the failure that happened on my boat was self inflicted (not verifying the torque of the top cap nuts often enough) that if I would have had a tougher cap I might of damaged the housing instead of the cap blowing off.

I decided to stick with the stock cap since it's the same material, although it looks like the ITS cap might be the best item if it fits conventional XR's. And Simek drive showers.