Friends,

just wondering if any of you have found small metal particles on your drain plug magnets and if so what did you do? The oil itself was pretty clean after app. 30 hours, there were small "chunks" less than 1/16th. inch in size on the magnet itself. The other two drives had nothing on the magnets. Total time on these XR drives is about 150 hours.

The drive in question is working fine, no more noise then normal, shifts fine etc.

Thanks for your input,

Steve

Steve,

You might want to read this thread about XR drives and pinion gears.

http://www.offshoreonly.com/forums/s...ighlight=rbtnt

Thanks Rbtnt,

That was an informative thread. I guess I'm in one of those "if I can get another 4 hours or so run time for the next trip and then pull it down" mode??

Thanks again for your help.

Hi Steve,

I am having to replace my pinion gears in my XR's because they apparently are soft and have excessive wear on them. The talk is that Merc may have had a bad run on gears initially, and were not heat treated correctly. My XR's only have 50 hours on them and I my boat is a 32' A/T. I am not running blowers but I do have a pair of naturally aspirated 540's making about 630hp each at the time. I now have about 680hp engines, but I have only about 2 hours on them since. Mr. Gadgets is doing the work for me. When we drained the old lube (25 hours) into a pan, we looked at the gear lube and it didn't really appear to have that "metalic" look until we took it outside in the sun. My drives will be re-assembled in about 1-2 weeks, but before that we are going to flush them out to get any remaining particles/shavings out. I had been using the Merc hi-perf green drive lube, but I am going to give the Redline Shockproof "Heavy" drive lube a go. I am hopeful that the gears were soft and that the new gears (pinion) have been heat treated correctly and that the gears will survive any exessive wearing with the power I am running. I hope this has shead a little more light on the subject for you---please keep me posted as I am just as interested in what others are finding in their XR drives. Thanks

Mark/KAAMA

SD it's normal!...xr gears are designed to take higher loads...they were not made for durability as the zx is....why do you think the zx is faster!?

although there are merc guys lurking on this board,,,they are not likely going to be posting...i recommend calling them first,,,,they may just know what's going on??

Joe, I just called Merc Hi-Perf as you suggested in Wisconsin and talked to a guy named "Pete" and told him about the excessive wear on the pinion gears. I asked him if he has heard of pinion gear problems wearing prematurely and his response was they hear of LOTS of failures on the XR drives for any number of reasons. He said there are only 3 guys like himself answering the phones for Merc Hi-Perf and therefore he would be sure to hear of any specific problems about pinion gears or any other part. I FORGOT to ask him why the forward gear wasn't wearing prematurely as like the pinion gear was. He told me that if there was anything wrong with the heat treatment process of the gears that the gears would most likely only last about 5-10 hours. I told him I had 50 hours on my drives with 630hp and he said he wouldn't expect them to have lived that long. Plus he said there is no warrantee without Merc's own engine product connected to the drive. Engine and drive package must be one. He was kind and professional, but I kinda felt as if I was talking to a brick wall.

So, what's a guy supposed to do?

mark!,,,you know i love ya!,,,but,,,i feel the same way...i think the hot ticket is #6 dry on ANYTHING more than 525's...more so with the larger boats...i like reliability...for the most part going fast and hp do not come cheap.

50 hours is a good number for what you are doing...i would swap the uppers to get more life out of them though...

Check the top cap bolts on the XR's . Every XR I checked, the top bolts were loose. I think this is a major cause of failure. Any metal on the magnet is a problem. my 2 cents

Thanks Jim----Actually, we found some, but not all the top caps bolts not to be as tight as they should when we were dis-assembling the drives. We also found one of the spanner nuts was coming loose as well. I am installing some billet top caps on the drives during this rebuild and they come with studs vs bolts.

Thanks for your input.

We've got them apart now and 2 of the drives are in virtually new condition after 150 hours. The Starboard drive had a tooth broken on the lower pinion gear. Thankfully that tooth stayed in the lower unit behind the gear and did no further damage. Aside from the broken tooth, the rest of the gear looked pretty good with minor pitting. BTW, the two drives with no damage have never had a hint of metal on the drain plug magnets since new.

All things being equal, these XR's have held up well for two years behind app. 700 HP Blower motors on a 13,000 pound hull. No special lube, just Merc high performance green. Some of that longevity might belong to the 1.36 ratio??

If you're near Fort Lauderdale, give a call and we'll visit the shop (SM Marine) and you can take a look at the drives for yourself.

Thanks again for the help,

Steve