Merry Christmas
I have the flat deck with 1600 arnesons. Here goes the history.
The boat was originally a TRS boat which worked well until I put 540 with 8-71 blowers in front of them. After 4 drives the first summer I looked for options. 3s and 4s were marginal for strength and parts were getting scarse. 5s on boxes would be nice but were pricey at that time. Wet sixes are a heavy good option but transom assys were expensive, dry sixes were not in the budget. Konrads were just coming out. So I came across this set of Arneson drives, with the help and guidance of Rik at Arneson and Dana at Twin Disc I am very happy with my current set-up.
I have a slightly custom install. To keep the weight back in my boat I mounted the Arneson drop boxes on custom made 5 inch set back boxes. This allowed me to keep the engines in about the same place they were with the TRS drives and puts the prop 5 feet off the back of the boat. The drives are also modified to counter rotate with a 1.56 ratio.
How does it run.
When I put the blower 540s in the boat with TRS drives I went a dissapointing 76 mph and broke drives. After the Arnesons with good props it goes 90 all day. In the pictures it has the props turning in and 4 blade cleavers, this setup ran close to 90 but the rough water handling was not as good. I currently run the props turning out (right hand prop on the right side) and the handling is good but the speed suffered. Then came prop games, my best running props up to the current ones were a set of Hoss round ears. These props carried the front of the boat well and got me back to a solid 90 but I kept breaking blades. As Rik stated, I finally broke down and spent a bunch of money on some 21 degree rake 6 blade Herrings, these seem to run very well. I ram them late in the season then took my boat apart to redo.
For my boat the drives have worked very well. I never had porpoising problem. Props make a huge difference on how the boat carries in choppy rough water and top speed. I think on todays stepped hulls these drives would work very well.
Kris Vogt