I've looked into the drive showers for my bravo 3 x drive but found mixed messages on whether or not they work. Would you recommend having one?
I've done some research where people are showing 30-50 degree drops in gear oil temp with the shower as measured with a remote gear smart outdrive oil temp gauge. That's good enough for me to justify the cost of the drive shower and the gear smart gauge.
I had a Fountain 27 Fever with a Bravo 1 and it came with a drive shower from the factory. Seems when pushing big power through the drives may as well do anything you can to keep the temps down in them.
Here is a snip from an alternate page where they talk about DPH drives and showers;
PASTE;
Hello,
I´ve now driven appr. 90 hours with the Gear Smart gauge installed. It´s awesome and should be a standard equipment with the
dph outdrives since their HUGE problem is overheating.
My boat is a 33ft, 8.800 lb deep-v hull with a D6-370 and G6 propellers. It reaches the recommended wot rpm 3,500. My cruising rpm is around 3.050 which gives a speed of 32 knots. With this configuration I´ve recorded following outdrive temperatures (at water temperature of 65F):
Without drive shower:
- cruising 210F
- wot 250F (didn´t really want to test how high it would go...)
With drive shower:
- cruising 185F
- wot 200F
I had a lubrication analysis made for the
dph-A by a highly professional research institute. Their conclusion was that the recommended oil 75W90 gives a sufficient oil film thickness at 120F. At 185F the oil film is practically non-existing. However according to them, a 75W140 oil gives same performance at 210F than the 75W90 at 120F. You can guess which oil I use now...
My conclusion is that the only way to survive with these outdrives is to use the above mentioned oil and an efficient drive shower.
Btw. I´m now on my 6th
dph in 900 hours (5x
dph-A´s and now a
dph-D). All five A´s have lost teeth in either upper or lower corner gears.
Best regards,
PolarBear