upper or lower ?
 

what is the weaker point on a bravo1 drive the upper or the lower,, im going to about 650 hp in my 32 active thunder this winter and im going to go to imco lowers and the bravo 1 uppers.

Also have 2 bravo 1 lowers 1 just rebuilt this past summer and the other about 50 hours ago both built by a marina and are working great. 2000.00 for the pr OBO

At 650 hp you should go with the Imco SCX drive. Bravo 1 won't last. If you want to stick with the bravos upgrade to XRs they will stay together a little longer.

uppers are the weak link and even XR's will be slightly under rated at 650hp......I have 630 (but 700TQ) and finally blew an upper after 90 hrs.

Quite honestly you could have gotten by with regular bravo lowers bolted to XR uppers.

Uppers for sure., and the LH rotation drive even more so. I blew an upper on my Pantera and the lower was fine. Bought an Imco upper and bolted up the stock lower. Never had a problem with 300hrs of use behind 550HP.

My thing is i need nose cones on my lowers for my set up and imco lowers alresdy have them built in and from what i here they are faster than stock bravo lowers.

You may need the lowers, but for a different reason.....you may need the nose cones for speed, you need the stronger uppers to keep from having to paddle that thing home! :)

So what do you guys recomend for drives for my application maybe imco lowers and xr upper or just put xr parts in my bravo uppers and go with imco lowers.

650 hp will blow an XR upper eventually, a regular bravo upper won't last nearly as long. The IMCO lower will probably help you run a little faster so you have to decide if you can afford to up-grade both 1/2's. If not, you need the uppers first.

upgrade to what.

I would put minimum XR uppers. Some say the IMCO upper is better than the Merc XR and that something like the SCX drive is way better. I have no experience with anything other than the Merc Bravo and Bravo XR. At 650 hp I just know the regular Bravo upper will be way over it's rating.....hell, that's over the XR's ratings. You could run it like you planned until you blow it up, just don't be surprised when it goes.

Just depends on how much $$$ you can spend and what potentially sitting on the docks in the summer are worth to you. I keep a spare XR ready at all times. Blew an upper this summer and was back on the water the next day (actually it blew on sunday, was on the water the next sat AM). Took a couple weeks til we tore it down and found out what needed to be bought to fix it.......almost everything! :(