You guys are wussies.

We used to brake Bravo's for lunch with 502/415hp engines. BTW: Fresh water here. Very fresh.

Common demonitaor between the group of boats busting Bravos - the boats where always packed with people (8+) and the boats where planing when the gears broke. 3 and 4 blade props. No one had the nutz to try more blades.

My boat has a 28p all ready on it and with 3-4 ppl and full tank of fuel hops on plane in 20-25 secs. With 2 PPl full of fuel in under 10seca. Loaded down with 7ppl, coolers, and fuel it take awhile but never blew a drive.

I have a shorty lower and I drive on the Great Lakes. No one can be perfect on the throttles and my prop leaves the water often. I don't slam the throttle out of the hole but I don't drive the boat like a ***** either. Let's see you make a Bravo X live in 4' Lake Erie slop.

Yet! I was saying the same thing until the end of last season. I was cruising along in calm water at 70mph and put the throttles down, hit about 80mph before it started slowing down. My gears now need dentures,

It can be done, although you have to baby the boat a lot. I am running 700 N/A power through my XR's and have done ok with them. Your pocketbook will teach you really quickly how to drive the boat, and it can get expensive fast. Coming on plane slowly, respecting rough water and easing into the power has kept the breaking points to a minimum. Have your drives pulled every winter and gone through. That will help locate a catastrophic failure before it happens, but even that doesn't provide any guarantees. It also helps to find a drive guy you can trust, get to know him and let him know if he takes care of you, it will make a frequent customer for the life of the boat.

There are many scenarios here, but the common theme is to take care. I own a smaller 22 Donzi ZX with a Bravo 1 that had over 500 hours with a Procharged 502 making somewhere around 675hp. I now have 50-ish hours on a N/A 540 pushing a little over 600. Drive was gone though during the repower and it looked very good. In my case, taking care has been the key even with WOT runs every time out. (Lake use) I can only assume that my time is coming, but I'll wait until it gives out before I drop any $$$ on a different drive.

Sounds like most of you guys are correct, it's how much weight you have to push vs HP doing it.

Load the boat up with people or a heavy boat has the biggest affect, especially when you try to over come it with horse power.

Bye Bye drive

I've got 2 or 3 extra Bravos I plan to post in Swap Shop this weekend.

PROBLEM SOLVED.

The max power a drive will see getting on plane is the max TQ the engines make (if its hooked up).
The biggest death blow is the torque spikes leaving and re-entering the water.
In my opinion getting on plane hard is not a big deal.

We have plenty of broken Bravo's to go against that theory. Several of these boats where near impossible to go airborne in our waters.

Obviously airtime will hammer the drives...however, that is not what I'm arguing.

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Edit in:
BTW. I can prove it for you. I'll come over, drive your boat, and show you.

LOL. Okay, more like LMAOF.