Hit the Showers - Powerboat Magazine

Including a letter to the Editor by Simrek Corp.

by Jim Gorant

POWERBOAT Magazine August 2000 page 38

After receiving the following e-mail from the author, we at Simrek decided that the article did not warrant any compensation and decided to simply remove it. We are very shocked the author would even hint at a compensation issue, much less outright ask for it. However our response to the original article is below their email. You’ll still find the original article in the archives at Powerboat Magazine.

Dear Editor of Powerboat Magazine;

For the past two years Simrek Corp. has been manufacturing the Multiport Drive Shower® that your magazine pictured in the August issue within the article entitled "Hit the Showers".

Though I do concur with the author that MerCruiser's little secret about their heat build up problem is pretty much out of the bag, I also found that your source of information, with respect to cooling them, was outdated.

The article stated, "Some (drive showers) dribble a spray over the top while others encapsulate the upper end of the drive and thoroughly douse it." I thought that it was rather humorous that the author repeatedly referred to the amount of water that a system like ours utilizes as "dribbling" and/or "sprinkling" when simple math proves that our system, with it's two pick-up ports, will supply water at a rate of 17.5 gals./min. with the boat traveling at 40 mph. That's far from dribbling!

The article also read, "both styles seem to work equally well". Testing of our system was done by two other magazines. They recently published their findings that the Multiport Drive Shower® will out perform the competition by nearly twice the cooling capabilities. Independent source testing has concluded that our Summit model will cool the drive by 50 degrees and our Halo model by 55 to 60 degrees. All of the other systems, regardless of their configuration, have only one pick-up port and will cool the drive by only 25 to 30 degrees.

Through extensive testing, it also became obvious to us that the pick-up ports that are found on all of the other drive cooling systems, and have been for years, can fail at higher trim levels when they are needed the most. We have redesigned our system with a patented 90 degree pick-up port that continues to cool the drive at all trim levels.

We at Simrek are proud of the fact that a boat owner can spend well over twice as much for another drive cooling system that will only cool their drive by half as much. We have by far the best drive cooling system on the market today, and to back up these claims we have posted all of the documented test results from the outside testing firms on our web site at www.driveshowers.com.

I just thought that your readers would appreciate this information before they spend their money on an outdated and inferior system.