Drive recommendation
 

I have a 27 fever with a 502 that I'm putting a Whipple on this winter. Looking for 650-700ish hp.The drive is a stock bravo and I'm sure that going to be the next thing I need, wondering what drive I should buy or upgrades to the stock one. Thinking -2 lower too?

An Imco SC upper and lower should be great. Get the lower blueprinted. Hering props.

Should I go with the in imco -2 lower

I have a imco lower -2 . Ran for a couple hours. $2500 firm

Good advice so far, the IMCO SC lower is sexy and fast, but plan on still rebuilding/freshening your drive periodically since most these bravo based drives still share many internals with them like gears etc.

Another option is buy a matching stock drive and when it breaks swap on the spare and send the broken one in for repair, or just freshen ahead of time before it breaks.

No matter what bravo based option you choose you will end up with the bravo blues

Any other non bravo gear drive options will cost a ton of money and speed lose.......

Mr. Gadgets Dick Tryce, All American Drive Service, The Bravo Shop, Max Machine Works all specialize in upgrading bravo based drives.

Well I'm not going to want anything, that makes it slower haha. What would make it faster

Not a Better Drive

We couldn't keep a Bravo style drive alive for a single season behind an 800SC Eddie Young motor in a 26 ft AO. Keeping a spare drive around makes sense but for us the drive would always go at the worst times. Two years in a row the drive failure disrupted our family vacation. The first failure happened the week before our annual trip and second a year later the second day of our week in Cumberland, frustrating! Then we installed IMCO SCX upper/SC lower and had a trouble free boating season. You may want to look into a more expensive upper (IMCO SCX or BMAX) the first time around. I'll bet some cash you'll save money on your drive budget if you keep the boat for a few years.

Was just gonna say I've seen scx uppers hold up well. Scx upper and sc lower seems like a good option to not negate speed and stay together.

no doubt , like the last two members say imco scx upper and the sc lower all bravo upgrades to let it last will be a waste of money as it still blow and ruin your day or days of boating .

The cost of Bravo repairs and down time, if you are planning on keeping the boat for any length of time - the Bravo conversion from Arneson becomes more viable. HP isn't an issue at that point and definitely ups the cool factor

The SCX upper SC lower or BMAX drive which both use bravo XR gears in the lower are definitely an upgrade that don't lose much speed BUT you still don't have complete peace of mind.

The bravo geared lower WILL wear out, pit, and spread metal through your beautiful upper....so make sure to freshen every winter so you catch any problems before they destroy the entire drive.

Bajajay98. I need a left rotation 1.5 for my 29 Fountain. Call 870 830 3222.

I offered him a complete package. IMCO new sct upper with a sc lower drive coupler bell housing 1350 bam trans imco ext box HD gimble housing silver power coated. All for little more then just the complete drive. $18,500.00

Not to cut into one's thread here, but I will be buying two new drives over the winter for the Fountain. If one would be interested in a used XR sweptback let me know. Decent service with Amsoil Severe Gear every 25 +/- hours. PM here or ask for the office phone, these will need to go, offers?

I ran a B-Max for 6 years on a Pro Charged 454 720 HP 727 TQ Velocity 280. It was turn key and ran 94.8 on GPS it was a great bullet proof bolt on.

On a non step fountain 27 would a -2 shorty be worth buying what kind of speed gains can be expected and is there any cons

I ran an XR 1.50 with a 26P Bravo I behind a Whippled 502 in a 27' Fastech for 4 years with just normal maintenance. Whatever drive you chose be sure to shower it.

Had a customer two years ago with 700 hp in a 27' Fever. It had an SC drive on it. SC didn't hold up. Blew the upper and wasted the transom assembly at the same time.

I re-rigged him for a BMax 1.50 ratio. Boat didn't loose any speed and it's been two years since I did the job and no failures.

At the 700 hp level, you'll need to refresh the lowers every 3 seasons or so, depending how you drive it. Just change the oil every 10-15 hours and monitor the fluid. If you ever see a metal flake in the oil, keep a closer eye on it. If at the next 10-15 hour sevice there's more metal flake then the first time, it's time to tear the lower down and put a new gearset in.

I run 965HP on BMax HT's. My uppers were freshened after 300 hours with new pinion gears. The lowers I replace every other season. You gotta pay to play.... but I don't have any failures (knock on wood).

[ATTACH=CONFIG]562455[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]562456[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]562457[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]562458[/ATTACH] @800 hp Whippled 525 efi 4 years regular maintenance,zero trouble. 27' progression 12" stand off 110 mph. IMCO SCX4

how many hours did the imco sc drive have on it behind that 700hp motor?
i have a 540 being built right now for a 27 ft boat with a fresh imco sc upper from imco all new gears ect. ect.
the -2imco lower i have with it, is said to be good to go but with unknown amount of hours...
will no hear in a few more weeks what the 540 goes on the dyno....

im actually second guessing my purchase of the imco sc....

About 40hrs. I also had Imco SC's on my Apache years ago and would get about 20 hrs before one popped. That's why I went with BMax's and that was in 2007.

My brother replaced the SC with the SCX on his 26 DCB, he lost 20 mph and the boat handles like crap.

in 2007 that was the BMax out of Florida - correct ? So what changed currently for the BMax ? and the current offerings compared to the Florida based BMax ?

Probably too deep and wrong prop - and really he lost 20 mph ? if so that is a lot.

A good summary here.
http://midwestboatparty.com/forum/sh...ght=bravo+shop

-2 less than SC, same prop, -20 mph GPS verified.

There is always All American Drive Service, they will upgrade your Bravo and warranty it for 2 years and for half the price of an SCX or BMAX. Don't know of anyone else that does that.

here is their "warranty" :(

I worked on a 28' Pantera this summer who had an SCX conversion done before I started working on it. The boat lost 11 mph.

The only was I was able to recover the lost speed was two part;
1. Swap out the SCX lower for a standard bravo lower and got back 8mph. I actually built and tested an SC lower and was still 5-6mph short. The standard Bravo lower was the only thing that worked on that boat.

2. Refreshed the engine and put a larger camshaft in it. That was good for getting him all his speed back plus an additional 2-3 mph.

Yes, that was the old Bravo shop.

There have been a lot of updates done by the new Bravo Shop which includes upgraded bearings, shiming proceedures, clutch stack height modifications etc. They also came out with a 1.50 ratio upper gearset which is probably the single biggest difference because the BMax drives I have only came with a 1.30 ratio back then. That change alone helped a lot with people no longer losing speed when making the change. The Fountain I did the conversion on had a 1.50 and he told me that he only lost 1 mph with the change. My Apache, even with the 1.30 only lost 1-2mph but gained 2-3 mph in cruise speed over the IMCO SC's.

I have a lot of respect for ADS but in all honesty, it's still just a bravo. There's only so much you can do with such a small gearset. I've found that 600 hp is about tops for a X drive and 700hp about max for an XR. Even at those power levels, you'l be replacing gear sets every couple of years.

There's no magic pixie dust in my opinion.