I have a 91 boat with bravo ones and nose cones they have been refered to as short/early b1 drives they do have tanks in the bilge. is the shorter nose coned bravo better due to less drive area in the water when did they go to the longer newer style anyway?

No regular bravo's came from Merc with nose cones and all of them are the same depth.

think hes talking about length from tip of bullit to tip of prop shaft rear ..the early ones were shorter

that is what im referring to the bullet to prop shaft. I know they don'tcome coned I looked at a newer drive a few weeks ago and it was longer than the bravos on my boat. just wondering advantages of the two and what year they went to the longer "horizontally" case

Its called aspect ratio. The bullet front nose seperates the water that's its going thru - as that separation takes place there is persay a air gap space - if the bullet is too short in length the prop will see this persay air gap. The bullet needs to be a certain length so that separation of water narrows itself back, by having a certain bullet length the prop can bite into the water as it has narrowed itself after the seperation. Hope this makes sense just trying to explain it in a very basic form.

the current length lower came out in 1990, it was reported to be good for speeds up to 95 mph...the older one wasn't much good beyond 70

http://river-service.ru/uploads/pdf/...formatsiya.pdf

Great site..

1990, i concur.

Thanks for the great info Pismo I was looking for something like that.