Just thought for everyones interest I'd let you all know how this goes.
I bought a 2007 Spectre 32 with a pair of 625s and Bravo 1 drives.
the boat is amazing. i never knew a boat could handle so well. When i got it a year ago it had 95 hours on each bank.

I thought I'd do the safe thing and strip the drives. Well lucky. Everything is twisting and the case hardening on the gears was coming off.

I absolutely cannot stand a day on the water cut short by a mechanical failure, so I bought the best I could find replacement drives that bolt straight on, no messing about.

I picked up a new pair of X-Power design drives and a pair of stainless gimbal rings. After quite a straight forward re-rigging it was time to try them out.

Holy **** they are good. Surface props set at the right height made the boat insane. But 30 minutes in, and only cruising along one of the motors lost power.

Long story short, a valve in the port motor jammed and took a nice beating from the piston as well as the rocker arm.

Fark this idea. Stuck out on the water after spending a fortune fixing drives thinking that Ilmors are the worlds benchmark of reliability.

No mucking around again, both motors out, crates and shipped to Ilmor. I love dealing with these people. they are amazing. Currently my motors are in bits and we are just working out how many years of blood ans sweat it will take to pay the next bill.

The interesting thing though, the motor that broke down has been rebuilt using parts from Pfaff. This motor must have had an issue prior.

I'm keen to see how well the boat goes with the 700HP Ilmors.

With the Bravo 1 drives, 625 motors and 34 x 15.5 hering props I was getting to 130 MPH quite easily.

I didn't push it with the X-Power drives because I was breaking them in gently.

I now have two sets of props for the X-Power drives.

16 x 31P x 16 5 blade Merc #6 props
and
16.25 x 35P x 16 Hering #6 props

I'm hoping the extra mumbo from the 7-10 motors can spin the Herings. Should be interesting. If you are interested I'll be keeping updates of the progress here.

that sucks about the motor , must have been a lemon with such little hour's on it .
I wonder if the motor's where turned up some way when the at ppaff's . 130 is a great speed for that set up keep us updated on the build .

good luck
mike

Let me know how you make out. My 625 will be going back next winter for the 700 upgrade.

Considering looking I to this option as well. Not sure what the rough cost on this is. I'm not a fan of the unknown.

if there are no nasty issues like cracks etc, it's about 20K per motor.

The team at Ilmor are fantastic to deal with. When we had issues with our merc 525s I found Merc terrible to deal with.

I thought the 625's and 710's had different blocks?

same blocks, just plenty of differences in the setup. The Gen4 motors which is the 725 are very different.

Thanks,
That boat should be awesome with 710's.
Good luck and keep us posted

Thanks for the info. Something to budget for. Hopefully mine make it thru the season.

will do. Waiting on latest news from Ilmor atm,