I had SeaVee owner Ariel Pared with me when we pulled away from the dock sideways, crabbing away briskly from our side-to moor. Grant Bentley captains Home Run, a 60-foot Spencer. The other issue was when the owner sold the boat they did a oil sample and found water and both lower units had to be resealed and a main shaft had to be changed. Whats another three grand, compared to the cost of a boat big enough and upscale enough for pod drives? Volvo uses only one oil, while Cummins uses three different ones in Zeus drives. While the maintenance schedule varies somewhat among pod builders, its essentially the same. A little cheaper because it was in SoCal. Pod drives, including the Volvo Penta IPS, Cummins Zeus, ZF Marine POD 4000, and CAT Three60 POD 650 have taken the recreational boat market by storm during the recent past. Also, you dont know how often the shaft seals will need replacement. Savings on a long haul might disappear when slowing to navigate a tricky channel or speeding up to avoid a storm. Best of the old and the new.maybe. Some could be rotated 180 degrees and run adequately facing either fore or aft. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Pods, on the other hand, need annual TLC, and this means skilled work. Yet catastrophic groundings are rare for all boats, although again, the financial consequences for the pod owner are usually steeper. When pods shear off, their recovery might cost a huge percentage of their value. Volvo Pentas IPS drive features patented forward-facing props, which lets them bite into clean water. ZF 63A with 4BT, flywheel torsion coupler issue??? But now that both Volvo Inboard Propulsion System and Cummins MerCruiser Zeus drives have been spinning beneath boats for more than five years, its time to assess the cost of ownership of pods versus conventional shafts. I also feel they will continue to loose market share to Volvo. (Volvo Penta soon followed suit.). Controlled at low speeds by a joystick rather than wheel, shifts, and throttles, pods take most of the angst, the apprehension, and, sometimes, the sheer terror out of close-quarters maneuvering. One described his skepticism like this: Its just too good to be true. Better fuel efficiency? Although there are claims of 30 percent efficiency gains in cruise and top-end speed as well as fuel savings, the results vary from boat to boat when compared to straight shaft and prop configurations. Plus, when we haul the boat, well catch problems a diver wont see.. Featuring a patented design that provides the simplest solution for vaping on the go with your Zeus 3rd generation vaporizer. Ask to see the service records for the boats first year. Click to enable/disable Google Analytics tracking. But how much more, and how complex is pod maintenance? Were still trying to sort through the answer to that one.