One sterndrive that has a little bit of a questionable past.
Is... (Bell rings)
(upbeat music)
Maybe you've seen it on a boat and it's got written down SX drive
or Alpha One and you thinking,
is this a great god or is this actually a boat?
The two main types of sterndrives that you'll see in Australia
are the Volvo Penta, or Mercury.
Now Volvo Penta actually has a list of different types of sterndrives
longer than my arm.
I'm not going to list every single sterndrive.
But what I am going to do, is I'm going to list the top six
that I see and which one to avoid.
Now I know straight away, there is going to be plenty of people that will say,
don't buy a sterndrive, sterndrives are rubbish,
that's fine, but we're talking about the people that have to.
These particular boats that don't make shaft drives in certain sizes.
And you've got to have a sterndrive.
The stern driven drive that I see a lot of is the Alpha One.
Now that's this small Mercury sterndrive
they've got a dog clutch for gear shifting.
So what that means is you'll hear a little clunk as it goes into gear,
they've got two teeth and the teeth have to mesh in together
so it's not as smooth when you change gears.
They're also fitted with an ignition cut so the teeth go in easily.
This makes for a very clunky sounding gearshift,
that is perfectly normal and these are smaller sterndrive
so they are not rated for really big horsepower,
you are not really going to see them on too many more boats.
You'll see them on some little Caribbeans
you'll see them on some Sea Rays.
Once you get sort of above 32 foot you won't see an Alpha drive
because they are not designed to hold the power
that you need to push about that size.
The one advantage of an Alpha is if your boat does have it and it is moored.
The cost of replacing an Alpha is a lot less than a Bravo sterndrive.
The second sterndrive that you see heaps of is Bravo Two and Bravo Three.
So the Bravo Two has a single propeller
and the Bravo Three has a duo propeller.
What that means is the duo propeller has two propellers
that spin independently and they provide more grip to the water.
As far as reliability goes, Bravo Two and Three are very similar.
I'd say the Bravo Two might be a slight bit more reliable
because it's got a little less stress
because it's got less grip on the water,
but they're both relatively similar,
easy to get parts for and a very common sterndrive in Australia.
The next one that you might see is a Bravo One,
the Bravo One, Bravo Two and Bravo Three all have cone clutches
so they don't make a clunking sound when they go into gear.
The difference with a Bravo One is the a single propeller,
and it's also got a front water pickup.
These aren't really suitable for boats that live on moorings
because you'll get barnacle growth in that front water pick up
the more of a high performance type ????.
I do see them occasionally
but you are just constantly pulling them apart
and cleaning out the water gallery so that you don't have an overheat.
Alternatively, some people block that off and now put in a sea strainer.
So the fourth sterndrive that I see a lot of is the Volvo SX.
Now there's a number of different offshoots, SX-M, SX-A.
They all got a cone clutch and they are all a relatively decent sterndrive.
I will say the SX has a very similar mounting position to a Bravo sterndrive,
where they mount to a face with six bolts,
the face can become corroded,
as long as you keep the water out of them, good set of bellows
and universals in good condition.
They are a decent sterndrive.
The next one I see a lot of is the DP, DPM, DPS, same sort of thing.
An alloy sterndrive with a cone clutch,
pretty popular as long as you keep the water out of them.
All the normal sterndrive components updated.
They tend to be pretty good.
The one thing I will say,
Volvo transom assemblies are probably a little bit better
than Mercury transom assemblies.
I say the Mercury steering pins leak a lot quicker than the Volvo ones,
and the Volvo ones are probably easier to repair.
Now there's going to be a lot of people saying, what about the 280 or the 290?
Sure, that was a popular sterndrive in the 90s,
but I don't see them quite as much now,
but they are still a good unit if you've got someone competent working on them.
Another sterndrive that has a little bit of a questionable past
is the Volvo XTP.
It was a composite drive,
so that means it's not an aluminium housing.
It's essentially a fiberglass plastic housing.
This particular sterndrive has a number of complaints online.
I'm not going to say too much about it, but,
do you googling and look up the XTP sterndrive.
The common complaint is that the universal bellows continues to fail.
And you get water entry in areas where you shouldn't
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