Alpha 1 generation 1/2
 

Buying/Stealing '86 23' Nova off E-Bay,383 stroker/390/410 hp,strong motor has alpha generation 1 guy bought and had installed.Just a run around the river boat but I know the limitations of gen 1,any suggestions-What's the life expectency?

Hard to say. They are definitley not a strong drive for higher Hp engines with more torque. If you want to be safe the best thing to do is to upgrade to a bravo. Otherwise it may run a while if you are easy on it, but it could just as easily start to give you grief.. ;)

That said the easier you treat it with the existing power & drive the longer it would likely be to last.. I certainly would not recommend you do any jumps, hard hole shots or throttle chopping with that drive behind it.. :)

Hope that helps.. :) Jamie / Lakeside

alpha
 

Well depends on weight of boat a LOT. We are running a alpha gen 1 on our stinger with a HEALTHY small block 390hp+ at 81 gps blew one top up in 3 years never replaced a bottom.Alpha are a lot cheaper to fix.We also thought about going to bravo but I can fix a lot of alpha's for the cost of the change over.Go to youtube 202 stinger fly bye .That's how we run most of the time,just watch leaving and re-entry.JOHN

As everyone else has said, just be somewhat careful. I have a 3400 lb. 21 ft. boat with a 385 ci full roller motor in front of a 1986 Alpha 1 GEN 1. We water ski, tube etc. The drive has never broken, never been apart for repairs, just a reseal job. I also run Redline Heavy Shockproof gear oil and a Simrek drive shower.
Dave

run the crap out of it, replace it with an sei if you blow it, see what happens...

I run a gen one up to 6000 rpms behind a 400+ hp 385... and sometimes hold it at 5500 plus (70s) for extended periods...

run through hull exhaust to keep from heating the drive up, redline shockproof is awesome stuff and what's in my current alpha ss drive, not sure about the need forshower... as said, boat weight is a big factor. upper gearcase is the main weak point.

another big one is making sure the shift interrupt is working properly and if you have to idle over 600 rpms or so (as in if you have a fair amount of cam), rig a push button bypass to the neutral safety switch and start it in gear unless it's unsafe to do so. a little chip on gear from popping into gear too hard gives it a place to come apart when under heavy loading.

for the cost of a complete sei drive (they seem to hold up at least as well the mercs), you can afford to blow one once in a while... and might not... I see some guys here rag the crap out of alpha drives and somehow they hold together... one is in a 19 ft Mariah with a blown small block in front of it... I've also trashed two of them - in one I lost a drive shaft...

I get a sense that most of the ones that come apart are from poor maintanice rather than really from the power in front of them. For example, I burnt a set of upper gears up, but if I'm honest, when I drained the lube, there were some little white streaks in the lube. even a little bit of water sitting for a while will conedense on the upper gears and just a tiny bit of surface rust will breach the hardening on the gears... and before you know it they're burnt blue and the lube drains out black. In other words... that one was my fault - not a failure of the drive to carry the load. although I would rather say that it was just a weak drive rather than me not religously making sure the drive was sealed...

I had a 22' pachanga with BB/alpha. Never any drive issues, but did go easy comming on plane and no jumps. I changed the gear oil every 10 hrs as well. Probly overkill on the oil changes but it was an alpha ss and didnt want to damage the caseing from gear failure. Also recommend drive shower.