Good Info Gary. This winter I been thinking of having my drives opened up, and see how things look. They have been working fine, but I have only owned them two seasons. From what I know, They have 150 hours on them. Im sure i'll be calling you. Thanks, Joe

Does anyone know what HP # 5's are officially rated for? Anyone ever put 900+ HP in front of these drives?

ive seen a couple guys on here running 1200hp through them.....

Not sure, but I think merc rated them for 750HP. I believe there are MANY people who have put 900+hp thru them. RMPRAM being one of them.

Years ago, merc had the #3 drive, used in racing. Then the competion began using surface drives, and merc's response to that was the #4. As time went on, the #3, evolved into the 3A, and the #4, evolved into the #5. The 3A and #5 were stronger than their predecessors.

Not exactly sure when the 3A and V drives came out, but many of the big power raceboats of the early to mid 80's were running regular old #3 drives with success. The #6 drive pretty much elminated the need for all of them. The nice thing about the IV and V drives, is that on some hulls, they gave the clearance needed to run high drive heights. You will see some older fountains with III's or IIIA's installed, and to get a higher x, the transom assemblies were pretty much cut into the rear of the deck joint. My older fountain, has ssm IV's, and they actually lowered the engines, when they re-rigged it from TRS, and my propshafts are about a inch below the bottom. I am able to run blowers, under my stock hatches. There would be no way to accomplish that on my hull using a #3 or 3a, especially with my molded in swim platform.

So, would you guys chose a #5 over the new Imco SCX stuff on let's say a 38' boat with 900 HP? Would it be basically trading speed for reliability? Meaning the #5 would be a faster drive but may give you problems with this combination of boat/HP versus a more reliable SCX that robs several MPH.

Apples and oranges, the #5 will be way more reliable than any drive that shifts in the drive.

So the #5 has an external transmission like the #6? If so, does it use the same tranny that a #6 would use? Thanks for the information, I've tried a search, but just putting in #5 doesn't net many results.

Yeah, trs through #6 all use trannies....basically a bravo type drive is the only drive that shifts in the drive itself. Yes they all use the same basic trannies but the more power you run the more mods have to be done to it.

Well I am running well over 1000 hp thru mine, they dyno'd at 1077 and 1084 when we freshened them up this spring and I have never had a problem with the drives, I did have tranny issues until I went with the Huber HM1450's then that problem went away. The drives as far as I am concerned are bullet proof.

The basic transmission used with the SSM drives (#3,3A,4,5,6) in a plug-in application is the same. The difference is in the tailstock. The #6 plug-in uses a tailstock specific to that application, while the others use the same tailstock.