I read a lot of post by Guys who say,,, I would do this ,, or I think this is the best ,,, Bad advice,,, You need to step back and read the post from the Guys who are doing it!!

Read the above ,,, 38 Sonic big power,,, Artic tells you that he has been running them for 3yrs and gets great support,,,,,

I have been beating on XR,s with Maxx Machine upgrades for 240hrs and they have not failed,,, I did break the old Port Top Cap (Merc) and wiped a bearing in the process... I then put on the Maxx Top Caps ,,,, No more problems...

Maxx will take your XR,s and upgrade them ,,, or they will sell you their own version at a Great Price..

Its the only way to Go,,,,,, I have 600sc Merc engines in a 36 foot Resin Bucket ( Heavy) and it works.. Good Luck,

RHC

One more thing ,,, Good Oil and change it every 30-40 hrs ,,, its cheap insurance ,,, if its got shavings in the oil ,,, tear them down ,,, if the Oil smells hot or burnt ,, tear them down and inspect the bearings and shafts,,, also run showers to help cool them..
again ,, Good luck and enjoy!


RHC

How about Konrads?

The best thing to help make your Bravo type drive last is REPLACE THE GEAR OILevery 25 hours. The Merc. Hi perf. gear oil is the best from what I have been told.I was also told after 200 hours have the drive set back up.The Max drive has shims.Just my 2 cents.

Articfriends, How much horsepower are you running and what boat?

Okay, I have many applications that are heavier and have more hp, do they count?

mercury doesn`t make the bravo xz anymore go with the bravo xr i have seen this drive behind some serious horsepower like yours. no problems when the owner knows how to run the boat

mercury upgraded their top cap for the bravo 2000 series and it does back fit to previous models as far as warranty mercury stands behind their product. i have never seen drive failure denied under warranty. like i said before if the owner knows how to run his boat the bravo will live well beyond 600 hp

the new bravo 2000 series also has a shimmable upper this opens up different gear ratios as well as better reliability with big power. my concerns with the Konrad are as follows
1.) WARRANTY all mechanical devices eventually fail what will th OEM do in this case i have personally seen mercury reimburse the owner for product failure well outside of the warranty they have been building drives for 40 years its not a fluke that they are #1
2.) availability of parts. mercury has a dealer network of over 6000 in the u.s. alone and most of the good dealers carry a large supply of drive parts (i could build 30 or 40 bravos all gear ratios all models from what is on my floor right now and you would be on the water tomorrow a Konrad might take weeks)
3.) PRICE a Konrad is 9k a bravo X can be found for 7.5k

Man, I wish the IMCO's had a 1 yr. warranty.. What is the cost of the Max Machine drive? I know the IMCO is $9,000.

I've got my fingers crossed, I'm going to be running 800 hp and 800 ft. lbs so I hope my new IMCO's stay together. They had about 10 hours on them, I tore them down, went thru all the gears, bearings, and shafts, everything looked fine.

RIK:: Sorry I was not clear ,,,, What I was trying to say is this ,,, a lot of people respond to these questions because they have an opinion,,, or because they have read the hype and don't really have first hand info,,, I then referred to the two users who made the comments about there own use of the Maxx Drives ... I don't doubt that you have more weight and more hp in use and don't have failures.. Hope they stay together and you get lots of hours

RHC