Mike Clesceri inventor and founder of Marine Design Corporation is a very smart guy. While running his boat he was breaking Mercury Racing Drives often, and after too many costly failures rather than just pay and complain about the problem he set out to find a solution. He had a theory about the problem and even had an idea to develop a product that would correct the problem, but being smart he did it the right way.
Most people would just build out a product and then go run it. This old way of product development wasn’t even close to good enough for Mike. To begin the project he needed real verifiable accurate data. He set up strain gauges in his boat to measure actual stresses on the drive components and identified how the transfer of torque load was communicating all the way through to the propeller and back. From all of this work, math, testing, and retesting Mike invented the DriveGuardian.
The DriveGuardian was first developed to correct problems with the Mercury Racing SSM VI and NXT drives. It was then configured for Bravo applications, crash boxes, and drive shafts. Of course before going to market rigorous testing was done by Mike in his own boat and then on the race course in many actual race boats who are know for destroying drives.
The results are incredible, the DriveGuardian works and works incredibly well. The small cost of these torque-limiting clutches that absorb and dissipate torque spikes will save you 10’s of thousands of dollars plus a bunch of down time.
The real success to this design is that it was developed from need and done in a purely professional way with the cost and time of the R & D done by the manufacturer well before it was ever brought to market.
Powerboat Nation is proud to have the Team of Marine Design Corporation onboard and very excited to review each of the numerous other innovative products they offer.
