I have a 97 Baja 24 Outlaw putting out ~625hp and about the same Tq. I have about 10 hours on the motor rebuild, no clue on the out drive. I had changed the oil before the season, and it was clean, etc.. Not I know I'm on borrowed time with a Bravo 1 and any real power in a fairly deep v heavy boat... I went to plane out and bam just started bouncing off the limiter. Lost forward, reverse and neutral are fine. I assume I destroyed the upper, seems to be common. Didn't make any noise, just all of a sudden no forward. Cable checks out fine. Running a 28p labbed bblade prop on this thing, and probably need to jump back down to a 26 as with the 28 it's HARD on it planing. What are my options here? Can I just use XR gears in my upper, what all has to be changed? This is a 1.50 ratio drive. Is it worth going back with a stock upper and trying to get through a season, or am I just dreaming? Ideas and suggestions would be appreciated it. I'm sure I can do the work myself, it's been awhile but I have had alpha's and a bravo 3 apart to do bearings and other work. I have a press, bearing vice, etc and some Merc tools I'll have to dig up.

Thanks for any suggestions.

You should talk to John P at the bravo shop. He has a nice upgrade package for the b1's that will take care of your problem... Merc Parts suck way undersized. Designed to keep parts sales in business.

Way back when my boat was almost new and I was still running a stock drive virually the same thing happened to me, I had went thru the 1 year old 502 and spruced it up a little, added a procharge m-3sc at that time. beat on it for a liittle over a season and did some small mods and went from a 26 to a 28, it sheared the floor on the original 2000 early style gears on my first ride out with the bigger prop. Its possiblle IF your going to stay at the 625 hp level a set of thick floor xz style upper gears might last you a reasonable amount of time , if you have future plans of beating on it hard at a higher hp level you might just want to bite the bullet and buy a heavier drive like the B-max or SCX upper and just be done with it. I have spent enough money fixing the Bravo drive on my Baja that I could have bought a high end drive by now and still had a pile of cash left ( although the hd options were slim 10 years ago), Smitty

SCX OR BMAX....please dont waste your money on fixing bravos. Seriously. You will regret it.

You should be able to get a properly set-up Bravo to live behind a 24 footer with 625hp.

xxxx2

Thank you! This is very good information. I honestly struggle to plane a bit with the 28 so I'm thinking of dropping back to the 26. I'd think though with 625 I should be able to push the 28? Either which way I'd like to try to salvage what I can and not drop 5k on a Xr upper. I appreciate the input of people that are telling me to buy a bmax, but lets be honest this is a 97 baja, the drive would be worth more than the boat. Can I use XZ upper gears in my B 1 housing? I thought I'd need a X case then?

Thanks,

Mike

As long as your upper hsg isn't damaged you could easily have xz upper gears put in, it is a popular upgrade for medium hp boats, Smitty

You could also find a used Imco SC.

SC EXTREME UPPER / BRAVO XR UPPER - OffshoreOnly Classifieds - Boat Classifieds - Boat Parts

I understand your boats a 97 24 outlaw BUT that's still a sweet boat, especially if its running and not broke down at the dock. PLUS you can always transfer the drive to your NEXT boat. Just a thought.

Michael,
More than likely you pushed the floor out of the fwd driven gear, it is a common problem and the reason Merc came out with the thick floored X gear kits. That was around 2001. Drives with serial numbers starting with OM have the thick floored gears. The gears will fit in your upper but the cone, and most the bearings need to be changed to work with the new gears. Merc has a kit with all new parts for the upper, you reuse your input shaft. Typically when a floor gets pushed out, it does minimal damage in the upper case.
If you go to XZ or XR gears you will need the larger input shaft. There isn't a kit for those two style of gears. XZ gears are the same as the X gears, except the input splines on the pinion gear are larger to accomodate the larger shaft. So going that route will cost more because you need to buy all the parts seperately.

The larger prop is probably the reason the floor was broken. Too much load and a good possibilty of so many hours everything in the drive was loose. I have a friend with a 28' Check weighs in at 5700lbs dry. It also is a 97. At 450hrs he wore out a set of lower gears. The preload was gone on all the tapered bearings and everything was loose. A complete rebuild with minimum mods and it lasted another 200hrs before the tower in the case let go. That was with the original upper gear set. He never broke the floor out of a gear, but the upper case had enough and it was done. Boat ran over 90mph, so he has sufficent power to destroy bravo drives.
I have several friends with 24' boats and over 800 hp running B1's with X gears and steel towers in the case and upper cap. Properly setup and assembled it is doable. Several of these friends have 3-4 seasons on their drives. XR gears are fragile these days and I recommend you avoid them unless you have enough power to knock the teeth off the helical gears (B1 and X gears). If you get a good set of XR upper gears they are stronger than the helicals, but you don't know what you get until you run them. I have an older set of upper XR gears with over 300hrs on the driven gears and 275 on the pinion gear. They were run in a B1 upper case on my 28' Check.
Anything is doable. Anything can be broken. Using a smaller prop will help save the drive. If the motor is capable of more rpm it is better for the drive. I regularly run over 6000rpm, setup properly the drive will live at higher rpms.
Hope this helps with your decisions..
Dick