Bravo style outdrives - what do you do to yours and when?

[HB Vic]

So when you swap drives do you inspect them and if they are good put them back on or are you just trying to spread the wear across two drives? Seems like it could get a little pricy rebuilding drives every 20 hours.

Guess I forgot that part. I send them in to get torn down, inspected, and parts replaced if needed.

[Menace Marine]

In my experience drive oil is the critical factor Without getting into a pissing match about what oil is better I will simply say good oil is fresh oil. Change it every 10-15 hours on the drives with bigger motors and you will be ok. If you have over the rated hp for the drive I like to inspect them at the 50 hour mark. It shouldn't be a problem keeping an xr style drive alive with under 1000 hp between the 50 hour inspections assuming the oil is kept clean and fresh.

[J.P.]

Hotboat,

You are running an 800 Teague engine in your F-26. I was under the impression that the Maxworx drive could handle 800hp with no problem. Your saying that you send it in every 20hrs. to have checked. That sounds expensive for the average boater, I'm not banging on the Maxworx drives but if there are defective parts in it after 20hrs It seems a bravo 1 XR is just as strong if maintained properly. Does the MAX upper have bigger gears or are they Merc gears with a beefier Max housing? Maybe your big toe is causing the drive damage after 20hrs. All that said 90% of the threads that I have read on Maxworx drives the owners with boats in our size range and running up to 1k hp love them. People with the bigger heavier boats not so much.
It's really odd that the SCX upper would make your boat handle so poorly. I run the B1XR SC Lower on a Mach26 and in the future would like to upgrade to maybe the SCX but I don't know now. What about the SCX-4 would that be an option with an SC Lower?

Thank You for starting this thread.