Hi… Does anyone have a resource to share the engineering behind the Volvo IPS “pod” design. I have a boat with pods and I’d love to see the gearing/bearing arrangements and mechanism etc that makes the system operate. Ideally I’d like to see engineering drawings, but I guess they are somewhat proprietary. I studied engineering in college and am honestly fascinated. I guess I am an engineering nerd but that’s fine. The attached is all I’ve got and it’s not enough lol.
Circa 2006-2007, I was invited to Gothenburg, Sweden for the international press debut of Volvo Penta's IPS drive system. About 50 members of the marine press from various countries were in attendance. I was sitting at a table with a group of editors from US based publications during a dinner banquet when I was approached by Lennart Arvidsson, the lead engineer on the IPS program. He asked me to join his engineering team at their table for the evening. He may be retired now, but if you can locate him, he would be most informative.
So, Back to your O P, I wonder if the service manual offers better pictures. Maybe one section of the drive at a time but something to check out. High quality PDF pages could be zoomed in nicely on your desktop. It's how I read our local news paper. I was just studying a picture of a discovered whisky still, before the sheriff dismantles it. Here is where that good quality PDF and zoom come in very well.
If you type "volvo IPS exploded drawing" into Google you get tons of stuff. Eg, click on "transmissions" on this page https://marinepartseurope.com/en/dealer/mpe/category/marine drives & transmissions/product/ips30-d/
I never thought much about this lately, but; It looks like VP still use wet cone clutches on their large IPS drives??? I remember ripping the forward gear off of a cone in my 290DP 35 years ago. I would hope this does not happen often these days. PIA motoring home from downtown Jax, thru the Trout river rail bridge that night,,, backwards..