beerock

theres a guy here in jersey with a BT with imco shorties and and chief 675sc's he has blown 2 drives in less then a a month, he had about 150 hours on the drives then started hitting some waves.

is it really the best way to go switching to #3's or just jumping right to #6's?

f311fr1

Look at Konrad drives. I have SSM #5 drives, twin 600 CI NA EFI 735 HP TMP engines, and Huber 1000 transmissions. Boat is 97 Twin Step SC430. Cruise @ 3500 RPM = 50 MPH on GPS. My drives have 3 inch spacers and no boxes. It is currently for sale in the OSO classified ads. I specifically re-rigged it from bravo's to avoid breakage. If I were to do it today I would go with the Konrads with the transmissions in the box. Joe Murray

Buddy OO

Go to LOTO and go by Bergers Marina, there is always black thunders with blown xr;s, They simply wont hold up and ask the black thunder owners at the lake about drive failures. Have spoke with couple of owners who are in litigation now with BT. also take the boat out in rough water and try to keep ir from porpoising and swaying because of cg problems. I tested 3 of them could'nt keep boat in water at 60mph in the rough stuff with tabs buried.

Boomer 880

Heard the same thing about the bottom of the boat now being all messed up and running very poorly, due to CG issues. The 46 at the Chicago show had HUGE tabs on it. I asked the rep about the oversized tabs and he stated that the owner wanted these because they look good.

BT does not want to rig anything with a transmission, as it causes more issues. However, they do not want to use Konrad with an extension boxes (with tranny inside) as they already have boxes built into the transom.

Good luck with the litigation! They took a chunk of my money before I bailed on the deal. I guess I got off easy.

Horseplay

CG issues???? We seldom even use the tabs on our BT. We don't have issues with porpising. I had a Top Gun before this and the BT has a much better overall ride. And that's at a 60 cruise.

PatriYacht

I have often wondered if these boat would work well with staggard engines. Does anyone know of one?

After a couple of rough poker runs the boat we had our first outdrive problem. We have 540's/650+hp. We were going 75 with 9 people and 150 gallons of gas on board. After the lunch stop, 1 outdrive wouldn't go back into gear. I'm off to see Mr. Gadgets on Monday.

Mr P just called me on his way home from Mr. Gadgets, it was a minor bearing problem, $100.00 repair and it looks like the boat will be back in the water by the weekend I am sure he will elabortate later Ms PatriYacht,

Buddy OO

I've seen a 62 page hydrodynamics engineer sealed analysis of the 460ec hull, cg, and seaworthyness conclusions, and believe me the cg is way off.Right now its in litigation, but will become public after that. As far as Bravo failures, even BT acknowledge there is a problem there. The amenities of the boat are awesome but without good handling and rough water ability, and lateral stability, the amenities dont matter, The problem could be easily remedied and then It would be a wave crushing luxury performance vessel.

Coolerman

I know that Black Thunder prides themself on having the most headroom in its class, but who is 6'10" tall anyways? The 460SC's seem to handle well as horseplay noted (obviously the third engine will lower the CG). Also, just out of curiosity, who did the hydrodynamic study? Hopefully the problem can be remedied.

Buddy OO

Was done up north and person who had it done spent over 75k for it, needless to say he has a 46ec with less than 28 hours on it and had already blown 4 drives, xr's, not sure where the case is but it is so specigic that I needed to brush up on my thermo and static dynamics , physics and calc. books from college to interpret it. weight distribution, step pattern, hull heightvs. beam width and unacceptable torque loads ability from drives were biggest problems, you can watch the Black thunders at loto go up and down in the rough water. I saw it in florida as well. I went to their facility in Hannibal, and they were working on the porpoise problem and lateral sway problem 3 years ago by truing to bury x dimension, but were scrubbing too much speed. They were putting Bravos on to keep a 525efi boat at 70mph for marketing. I tried 3 of them out and they had had identical problem could'nt keep nose down even with full tabs. could only run 60 wot

PatriYacht

That sounds strange. I have thought of staggering mine and putting on better drives but the boat is too old to throw large amounts of money at it, and so far we have not had any major problems. Better to start with a newer one. Are all of the step hulls having this problem?