CAFE

has anyone ever tried extension boxes on a cafe racer with bravo drives. if so with success or failure or no change in ride or performance. also what brand, stellings or imco boxes.

Brad

Call Tres at Martin Offshore! He would know!

asmith

just installed stellings trs to bravo boxes on my cafe per stellings and the boat slowed down at least 12 miles per hour. blocked the transom, raised the boxes 3 inches, and installed imco 2 inch shorties. got the 12mph back plus some. still trying props to know exactly how much. stellings realy screwed up on thier measurments but one good thing is that with the drive shafts the motors dont have to be raised. would have been alot easyier if i hade not used 5200 on original install. boat handles great with new setup.

Sean

I've been thinking about doing the same thing to my Cafe...

a smith, can you post or email pics of your configuration? Are the boxes built wrong or is the x dimension that Stellings gave you wrong? What did they have to say about your particular install?

I also spoke to Tres and he thought the addition of boxes would be an improvement.

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CAFE

sean, what kind of improvements did tres say you should see. im trying to get as much info as possible because of the cost of the stellings boxes. i guess imco has boxes also at about 1/2 the price. what brand are you thinking about?? thanks doug
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birdog

Not to step on your thread........But....I have been thinking about this for my Bullet....anybody tried it ?
Thanks

asmith

sean when i ordered the boxes from stellings randy told me that they had sold them to another cig owner and that he didnt pick up or lose any speed but the handling had improved. so i went into the project expecting to have to buy imco shortys to pick up, but did not expect to lose 12 mph. after talking to tres we figured out that the x demenision needed to go up 5 inches. so with the imcos i still needed to go up 3 inches. the stellings boxes are supposed to be direct replacements and bolt to the same hole that the trs gimbals came out of. if you do that you will be as disapointed as i was. with that being said it was a pretty easy fix once i pulled everything back apart. take a trs gimbal gasket raise it 3 inches above the old holes and redrill. you will have to block the bottom of the transom at least 3 inches so the bottom two bolts will have somthing bolt to which is the hardest part but still not to bad. worst part of the whole deal is just having to do it twice. stellings knows that there is a problem with the boxes and will give you a very good deal if you ask. i got a very good deal on mine.just make sure you raise them on the transom. i was only going to go up 2 inches but like tres said if its too far you can always space them down. its a whole lot harder to go up. mine just barley blows out the props when getting on plane. i am going to leave them where they are. i will try to post pictures later this week

wannabe

This is HUGE amount!!

I would expect an inch at most.

Somebody did not know what they were doing (like taking the dimension off the wrong part of the transom) when they told you that. I would be mad as heck.

Glad it turned out OK.

Wannabe

Sean

a smith,

thanks for the reply...it sounds like they need to redesign those boxes...

the funny thing is, they show them in their ads in Powerboat...ther must be alot of pissed off people out there...

what affect does raising the x have on the drive shaft angle and universals?

asmith

sean when i put the boxes on the driveshafts had a downward angle to the boxes. could not find my angle gauge to check but it looked like more than what mercury calls for, but i figured stellings new what they were doing. when i raised the boxes up the 3 inches i needed it put the drive shafts perfectly level. where they should be. as to the bunch of pissed off people when i talked to stellings about a month ago about my problem to ask them if any one else hade the same problem they told me they had only sold a couple of sets.