All,

I grenaded a Bravo 1 and am considering replacing with Bravo XR's. The boat is a Formula 382 with stock EFI HP500's that I would like to someday bump up in HP.

Does anyone have any experience with the XR Sportmaster lower vs. a standard XR lower? Any speed difference?

Thanks,
Garrett

Garrett,

I have heard sportmaster lowers will slow the 382 down 1-2 m.p.h. You might also loose just a little going to XR. Theory is it takes a little more hp to turn the straight cut gears and fatter shafts. Less likely to break down though.

My friend here just ate up a standard Bravo on his '98 382 with 525SC motors this weekend and he is considering the upgrade to XRs.

Should have my motor back Friday!

Chris

Hi Chris,

Congrats on getting the motor back. My boat has been at the dealer for 4 weeks (they were backed up). I'm not anticipating getting it back anytime soon.

Back to the drives:
I was thinking I could get the shorty sportmaster lowers on new XRs and solve my deep propshaft dimension at the same time as the upgrade.

I just got back from the boat dealer. They said that the boat currently has Bravo XZ drives which are a little better than standard Bravo 1's but not as good as the XRs.

The starboard XZ drive tore up all the upper gears and mangled the case where the input shaft come in. They said it would need new upper gears and a new upper housing. They didn't even take the bottom apart yet, but they would have to take it apart too to get all the metal out and check the lower gears. They are waiting until they hear from me what I want to do. They are saying that a new Bravo XZ is $11k and a new standard (not sportmaster) XR is $13k. This sounds high to me, but I don't know.

I hate to spend this much money on new drives, but I don't want to replace an XZ for $11k and then blow another XZ and then I will have wished I had just plunked it all down at once and gotten two new XR's.

Is there any other alternatives once spending this kind of cash?

The dealer said that this is just for the drive and that the old transom assemblies will work fine with the new XR's. Is this right?

Thx,
Garrett

that is very very high, just buy a merc xr reman upper from merc ( most of the time they are brand new due to lack of cores) or check the classifieds here on oso

check out these deals from BAM

http://www.offshoreonly.com/esvon/page-7647.html

Get Mr.Gadgets to put together a couple of XR uppers with Imco lowers. He did a pair for me. Precision assembly and a good price.

Do some checking on here and E-bay,you'll find new xr's easily for 7500$ each,sometmes less. Hell,for 10 g's each you could get fully upgraded new xr's from max machine worx with billet shafts,hd everything,Smitty

My 36 Outlaw came with 500 EFI's and XZ drives also.

The Xz's just will not hold up to the weight of boats like yours and mine.

Both times I lost the upper gear sets, adn once it took out the entire drive.

The prices you are quoting I hope are for two and not each.

I picked up two brand new XZ's last year from Don in Fort Myers, I cannot remember the company name off the top of my head, but I got them for about $5500.00 each.

I also picked up a reman upper ZR for just $3000.00.

As mentioned above contact Dick Tryce AKA "Mr Gadgets".

He can build you some killer drives that will hold up. I plan to be sending mine to him soon.

Good luck

Dock