are zeus pods still being manufactured

are zeus pods still being manufactured

I guess you could say I'm a power user that vapes around 1-2 grams a day and after almost a week of use, I'm still on my first ArcPod. While it is possible to reuse lids to reduce your consumption cost, they will impact the flavor negatively, same way as a disposable cup will impact the flavour of your coffee negatively if reused. Yes, BM, thanks for all the info and posting your actual experiences always adds a lot of value to any discussion. Volvo uses SAE 75w140 oil for both the transmission and lower unit. Will Pod-Drives Overtake Conventional Shafts and Struts? In addition, I enjoy the added efficiencies Tony mentions above. I worked on a boat with Zeus pods for about three years. If you lose oil or get water in the lower unit, an alarm will sound before the problem becomes catastrophic, Fessenden said of Cummins drives. Once you go to 3 or 4 engines or pods, I'd rather have shafts as the fuel efficiency with triples is only 10% better and not worth the maintenance cost and in a 4 engine/pod installation they tend to burn the same amount of fuel AND much more maintenance of 4. A very hard grounding is also likely to cost less with pods, since theyre meant to shear off and then go right back onto the boat with just a thorough service and new bolts. You might not think of Cat as a pod company, but since ZF offered its pods to the market, hes helped several manufacturers build ZF or Zeus pod with Caterpillar engines. Most pod boats burn roughly the same per mile through a wide range of cruising speeds; conventional shaft boats typically have a narrow sweet spot. Yet catastrophic groundings are rare for all boats, although again, the financial consequences for the pod owner are usually steeper. Somewhere in between the cost of straightening conventional shafts and rudders, and possibly even repairing transmissions, the advantage shifts back to pods. These are often second- or third-told tales with a questionable provenance and few verifiable facts. In fact, shafts and struts have been driven through the hull by groundings and collisions with floating debris. In sum, with todays technology, the best combination might be a shaft boat, bow and stern thrusters, and the Cummins power plant with electronic joy stick controls. (Stranded in Guaymas, Mexico, I watched a guy true up a dinged prop using just a single jack and anvil. As Mercury continues to grow its diesel business, Zeus support will grow. When you back down an inboard, the rudder posts start vibrating, and the boat sounds like its coming apart. You dont have to redesign it to get our joystick maneuvering system. Petzold said he thought that was about right, even almost four years later. We only go around once anyway, so pay the money, grab the joystick, and have some angst-free enjoyment. Volvos Active Corrosion System, which is standard on IPS 800 or larger drives, is similar. Then Zeus offered Sky Hook, a station-keeping device that combined data from a GPS and an electronic compass to keep the vessel perfectly still within a yard or two. I am liking the Searay 44 Sedan Bridge of the ~2009 vintage as those have QSC500s with conventional drives. On the other hand, touching bottom only hard enough to bend the propellers will likely cost more on pods, because they have two props to repair on each drive. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. I also feel they will continue to loose market share to Volvo. Trawlers dont benefit much from pods. Marlin Magazine may receive financial compensation for products purchased through this site. Zincs every year, costing a few bucks, a new Cutless bearing every once in a while, and a couple of brushfuls of paint for the struts and rudders. Volvo has one zinc hidden, but accessible, on the drive itself. But point and shoot was only part of it; IPS also claimed more speed and better fuel efficiency (the precise amount of each is still up for discussion), and thanks to its aft engine placement, more interior space and lower interior sound levels. Our drives are made to stand up to a light freshwater rinse, Fessenden said, but dont blast them with the hose. Fessenden suggests a light coating of Mercurys corrosion spray. Some pods require draining. Theoretically. The new props dont ventilate, and their position alignment with the keel gave them a decided advantage by leveling the keel on the hole shot. Thats a hard question to answer, due to the past 15 months, Meissner says, referring to the economic recession. FREE shipping on orders of $100.00 and above. Our best guess is it will take a significant chunk of the market. Is there some X Factor or Factors that negates the pods proven advantages? All my personal experience to date is with 6BTA 370s in a conventional shaft drive arrangement. The boat had a set of outriggers, and fishing out of Beaufort, North Carolina, we caught the first billfish ever with an IPS drive system. Nor did I want to. Volvo Penta officially introduced IPS (Inboard Performance System) pod drives at the 2005 Miami Boat Show; Cummins and ZF Marine followed, one and four years later, with their own versions. Yes, pods have sheared off upon striking something immovable (as theyre designed to do), leaving the hull intact and the owner with a five-figure repair bill. Also demanding periodic attention are hydraulic steering, transmission, and lower-unit oils. I stay on top of the maintenance, oil and everything and never had a breakdown., Some people complain about the top-end speed of pods. Partly because of their angle of attack and partly because of their slightly forward position under the hull, pods gave more speed, better acceleration and more miles per gallon on the same horsepower. Ariel Pared is the president of SeeVee, which has built about 20 Volvo Penta IPS-drive boats. Siebert puts annual maintenance for pods roughly $2,000 above what straight shafts cost, not including extra haul-out fees for boats that exceed 250 engine-hours per year. Although pod housings are built of corrosion-resistant bronze rather than the aluminum alloy used for stern drives, its still critical to maintain the anodes. $44 MediaLight Mk2 Flex 4m D65 6500CRI98 Bias Lighting USB powered ComputersTablets & Networking Laptop & Desktop Accessories USB Lights & Gadgets Especially if you plan on going on extended trips Pretty much wherever you ventured you would have always found someone to get you out of trouble with your 6BTA 370s and conventional drive line but if things go wrong your odds of getting the help you need and having anything left in your wallet (or hairs left in your head) could be less than favorable. Can anyone speak to when there were evolutionary changes in the Zeus pods? A Valid Government issued Identification is required to receive product. With a shaft and strut inboard, you can pretty much pull up to any marina in the world and get it serviced. On Cummins drives, standard-equipment MerCathode system anodes emit a tiny electrical charge opposite the damaging electrical currents that normally flow through metal parts in seawater, actively protecting pods from galvanic corrosion. If one engine vibrates but the other doesnt while in neutral, the problem is likely in the always-turning jack shaft. Most pods also require periodic removal and inspection of prop sets and seals, and re-greasing of the propshaftsfigure $250 per pod. Theyre the cleanest-burning motors Ive experienced. Those anodes shouldnt dissolve like zincs do, but both systems should be checked annually. Pods are comprised of some very costly components, but theoretically, their modular design should yield some countervailing savings in labor costs. Volvo Penta has 16,000 pod-drive boats in the marketplace right now. Pods require drive-oil changes every 250 hours or annually. But downward-pointing conventional shafts lift sterns, negating, or even reversing, that fuel-economy advantage at slower speeds (0.92 nmg shafts @ 15.9 kts. Were still trying to sort through the answer to that one. Just add a bracket and bolt them on, install the digital controls and joystick and youre set. I was surprised by how light and long lasting these were. Thats not chump change, but neither is it likely to produce heart palpitations in the owner of a million-dollar vessel. Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. Pivoting a boat is simply accomplished by twisting a joystick. Best of the old and the new.maybe. The company has built exactly one 42-footer without pods since, versus a dozen boats with the pods option and another 50 of the new, pod-only 42-footer. Before, maneuvering required forethought, logic, coordination, and strategizing; after, it became mere intuition: Look where you want to go and point the joystick that way. Blades, pitch etc Read some of the posting by Tom Bartolomei about what he has been doing with his Sabre to tune the prop sets on his pods. I am after some of Seaboards famous frank and honest advice: should I run away from pod drives.or go for them if they have a solid maintenance track record which I need to commit to maintaining.or go for them without hesitation because they really are the better technology? You put it in sport fish, and it locks the pods in opposite directions. We backed around and spun both ways with speed I have only seen once or twice before. Whats another three grand, compared to the cost of a boat big enough and upscale enough for pod drives? The bottom line is, while pods are difficult or in many cases impossible to retrofit, the boat really has to be designed for the pod from the beginning, although some V- and stern-drive boats can handle pods, too. Care should be taken prior to using a vaporizer, as vaporizing will not necessarily eliminate any and all toxins found in vaporized blends. However, the 48 Fly is offered with the engine you mention or with the IPS 700. Alas, the fact that electronics dont respond well to brute force may mean some service challenges, at least in the short term, which is why long-distance cruisers have, as a group, been wary of pods. With IPS Ill run out to the Corner and fish the tide for wahoo, then head over to Gingerbread and get some yelloweye before heading home. Inboard fans argue that the pod-drives lack torque. We back it up with a concierge service. Dont cheap out on anodes, Petzold advised. The Zeus ArcPods are the convenient method of preparing, loading, and transporting your dry herb for use with your Zeus Arc GTS or Arc S vaporizer. The first pod-drive was invented in 1955 and went by the generic name azimuth thruster. They were either diesel- or electric-powered, and some were large enough for a man to walk around inside the machinery housing. Cummins uses aluminum-gallium anodes to best protect bronze drives. Im all about new technology. (Power & Motoryacht once had a company boat powered by inboards with which the publisher at the time rammed a sunken fuel barge at a healthy clip. If we have to go searching or put divers in the water, thats another story. To prevent later claims of piracy, come to an agreement beforehand, Little said. Volvo Pentas IPS drive features patented forward-facing props, which lets them bite into clean water. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain. Other than checking anodes, Petzold said the most important thing to do is change the fluids per the maintenance schedule, and use the recommended gear oil, or oils. Click to enable/disable _gid - Google Analytics Cookie. It wasnt so long ago that a pair of 250-horsepower outboards was as much power as any non-raceboater could hang on the stern. Short term fun, handling / high end features, and higher speeds vs. shaft drives at the same total (no too heavy) weight Mostly yes to these parameters, ZEUS would come in 1st. But conventional wisdom no longer applies. However, I think the best application I have run to date was a 39-foot SeaVee with pod-drives. And often, they are recoverable and repairable. But tick them off and its hard not to conclude that the trend is undeniable: More boaters prefer them every year, and while theyll never completely replace inboards, they are the future of boating. Many products featured on this site were editorially chosen. Exhaust fumes are emitted into the prop wash. How many buyers do you think reconsider upgrading to pods because of the extra maintenance cost? Nevertheless, pods are making inroads. 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. That said, the pods are a bit more in annual maintenance. Some really nice high tech features that most will never use. And, if you preferred to stand, Viking built the helm so you could control the pods with traditional dual levers.. Most pods also require periodic removal and inspection of prop sets and seals, and re-greasing of the propshaftsfigure $250 per . These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features. Pods, on the other hand, need annual TLC, and this means skilled work. I rarely say this but if your dead set on a pod option I would put Volvos in. Weight kills the speed on pod-drives, compared to shaft-drives, Smith says. We created Lids for you to reuse your Aluminum ArcPods. Spencer Yachts builds an 87-footer with ZF pods, and Smith was integral to the development process. Hes also found them to be extremely reliable. Okay, the motors cost about $80,000 and $90,000, respectively. Cummins says you dont have to haul, but it takes a lot more time to suck that heavy oil out than to just drain it from the bottom, Siebert said. Yes, you need to be concerned about steering and propulsion fluids (lower unit) but you are not dealing with shaft irregularities, cutlass bearing maintenance, and thruster maintenance. Imagine a 44-footer with three cabins, two heads, and inboards priced $20,000 less than an identical 44-footer with pods that, thanks to its aft-engine placement, has one more cabin or head. Docking is super easy with joy stick controls. All with a simple push or twist of the joystick. But this was a first for the recreational segment of the marine industry, and there was a lot of buzz and excitement. Eager to fish with them, I was along with Ed Szilagyi, then Volvos boatbuilder installation liaison and company captain, on that same Tiara demo. Months later, Mercruiser and Cummins joined forces to deliver Zeus pod-drives to boaters. KISS Keep It Simple Sailor. One hardly noticed the greatest benefit to the end user: The engine systems were so compact, many boats could gain an aft cabin or at least a sleeping berth where diesel engines once thrummed away. I liked the idea of being able to handle the boat from the helm seat instead of standing up all the time. His experience tells him a similar grounding with conventional shafts would have been much worse, perhaps even damaging rudder or strut supports badly enough to flood the boat. are zeus pods still being manufactured. But who cares, really? The pod-drives gave us the ability to manage the narrow locks and small marinas along that route without a bow thruster. Being new to power boating, I selected this configuration for ease of docking and it has been fabulous. Caterpillar also offers a pod configuration with its CAT Three60 Pod 650, which is essentially a pod-drive married to a C8.7 engine. Its better to do it at haulout, when the oil can be drained by gravity, rather than sucking it out with a pump. While builders debated the benefits of the different pod designs, many new boaters were simply seduced by the joystick maneuvering system. Inboards require sacrificial-anode replacement, prop adjustment, cutless bearing repair, shaft alignment, and a method of controlling marine growth.

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