When I went looking for upgrade lower gears and a shaft for my TRS drives I found nothing..A company that I'm part of manufactures different gears etc. I'm thinking about tooling some lower gears made from 8620 and a shaft from 300M. Would there be any interest in these parts? It seems almost impossible to find even stock new parts for the TRS. I know this is the weak link and I'm sure the lower case is next. If I start breaking those I might look into making better lower housings.

I figure some good strong parts for the TRS might be a nice alternative to a pricey complete Konrad setup.
Thoughts?

I cant speak for the TRS but, IF you can make some bravo XR gears that are better than Mercury is currently making at a reasonable cost.........you will have trouble counting all your money.

Liked the above (Bravo Post) 1,247 times ^^^^^^^

Read into patents and protection before you do. Merc famous for protecting almost everything, which I don't blame'm.

I highly doubt they have a patent on the gearset unless they came up with some crazy new gear pattern shape. Plus patents only last 25 years and i think that drive is older than that

the last TRS was made in 93. last OEM installed in a boat in 86. heck, the Bravo was patented no later than 88, so it's gotta be no longer protected...

I'll have to check and see what the xr gears are made of. They might already be something good but I doubt it. What breaks in the XR lower gears like the TRS?

I can't help but wonder why nobody has done this yet. It's commonplace for us to have things like this made for our race cars.

Doug Fortin was years ago....

If I do this I'll probably do the XR gears too.

If you do them right, there is no shortage of customers. I have to replace upper and lowers on starboard this year. Replaced entire port drive last year. Boat has 300+ hrs, can't be mad but life would be better if I knew the new parts were better quality and durability.