Mercury Bravo vs Volvo Penta DPH outdrive


W

Wilks

New member
I have run mercury bravo drives for years and broke my share. I just had a chance to compare upper gears between Bravo & DPH. DPH gear set is notably bigger and more stout. Bravo X on right.
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My thougths are that Merc still has the corrosion issues and therefore I stay away. Volvo Penta has never let me down.
 
Merc has 3 different gear sets
Comparing VP and Merc in pics only would slant things. The gear teeth on the VP are larger on the left, but what are the ratios and what are the VP and Merc drive types?

Just to be a fair comparison
 
The merc gear set in pic is a 27/32 which is in a 1.5 ratio bravo 1X. All the bravo gear sets are the same physical size. The bravo xr uses straight cut gears but is physical the same size.


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I have never had good long term reliability from XR gears. 200-300 hrs seem to be lifespan. XR gears have one one tooth in contact with one tooth so all the pressure is exerted on this contact. The gear teeth slowly pit at the base and finally a tooth breaks which causes the upper gears to grenade for lack of better word. The tooth that breaks is large and no room for it in case so it sometimes breaks the upper case.
The angle cut gears have three teeth in contact and seem to mush off over time and don?t end with such a bad outcome. Another benefit of X gears over XR is the X gears are 1/2 the cost.


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Speaking of outboards, how does twice as many moving parts ( two engines/drives to four engines/drives) equal more reliability?


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And really easy to replace the shift cables on the Volvo Drive!
So far so good in my new to me 310BR with Volvo 6.0 380HP ocean x drives.

Always had Merc in the past. From TR drives all the way to Bravo 3.
 
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