Borg-Warner Vee Drive?

A friend has made an offer on a Davidson 44. It has a VW Pacemaker? engine mounted under the companionway that drives a vee-drive mounted midships. The last survey indicated that the drive was raw water cooled and may have corrosion in the water jacket.

I've never heard of a water cooled vee-drive for a sailboat before. I can't seem to find any information on the net. The B-W vee-drives that I've found don't show water cooling hardware.

Anyone have an idea what kind of drive this might be? Are these drives prone to failure due to the raw water cooling? The boat was built in 1981 if that helps.

TIA

Randy

 

Vee Drive

I believe you misunderstood the surveyor. The Vee Drive is simply a gear box that reverses the output shaft direction. It does not need cooling. The water Jacket he was refering too is the one that uses water to keep then engine cool. Most inboard engines are cooled by sea water. A "Fresh water" cooled engine means it has system similar to a car. Sea water passes through a heat exchanger and cools the fresh water/antifreeze mixture that circulates though the engine to keep it cool. "Raw water" cooling means sea water is circulated through the engine to keep it cool. Both systems exhaust the cooling sea water through the exhaust pipe. Since the "raw water" system exposes much more of the engine to corrosive salt water they tend to have more corrosion issues, because of the higher temps, problems usually occur around the exhaust manifold first.

 

There could be an oil cooler on it, that is raw water cooled. If the oil in the V-Drive is milky then it has water in it. probably from the oil cooler--Common in an old boat like that, Zincs to protect the cooler were probably forgotten about a long time ago.