Well my initial drive thoughts where the drive belts where old and couldnt take the stress so I replaced them with new one. 5 minutes later and another shreded belt and busted pinion. So I decided to take the plunge and convert her to direct drive.
To necessitate this I cut away part of the bulkhead and added new motor mounts. I spoke to my LHS about this and they said they had done this conversion on afew challengers, they supplied universal motor mounts and universal couplings.
I was initially incredialous about using these couplings but I have decided to give it a go:
I've bench tested her which required me to remount the right hand motor as there was some issue with overheating and vibration. I've added collars on the shafts (salvaged from the damaged pinions) as the bearings were popping out and this prevents the drive shafts from moving.
I've not had a chance to get her in the water yet but im hoping that on the lake some of the vibration will be damped (I cant get my Najade past half throttle on the bench without it shaking the coupler to pieces but it runs fine on the lake).
The right hand bearing seems to be heating up quite a lot, I've checked the alignment and its pretty spot on. Im hoping its an issue with the bearing and a new one will solve this.
I've ordered some flexiable heavy duty rubber couplings in case the U-joints fail. Also hoping these will cut down the vibrations.
Finally I've decided to swap out the motors to lower KV. Currently I have some 2200kv 3675s in to achive 15-20k RPM on 4s. Now I've not got the gear reductions the jet drives are pushing 36-40K rpm unloaded. This is far too much and will endanger the jet drives. Im dropping down to some 1100kv 3674s 1500w each. I should have the same top speed I did before which is plenty!