I am buying upgrades for my Alpha Drives. I plan to buy drive showers. I have noticed that in a lot of pictures on this web site boats have tie-bars. What is the purpose of tie-bars?....are they necessary or more cosmetic?

they take a lot of the stress off the tiller and post, pretty easy to make if you can tig, yook me about 2 hours to make mine.

I only have a mig welder, I do not have anything to weld aluminum or stainless. So in your opinion they are needed? By the time I buy the joints, material in stainless, and someone to weld them--I should probably pay CP's price.

they will save your stuff, so I guess there needed.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/NEW-T...QQcmdZViewItem
just a little cheaper..this guy has several...

I had a loose gimbal on the port side and bought it to take up some of the slop in the drive origionaly. Since I have changed the transom. I do still run it , Eddie marine makes a nice one and it allows for more mis-alignment in the drives than others like the latham heim joint style. Looks like the imco is similar.

They're also integral to your drive toe in/out adjustment.

Is there a "standard" tie-bar measurement for say non-staggered BBC/Bravo setups?

tie bar, drive showers and regular drive oil changes are best things you can do for any alpha set up......some guys put on the Merc remote oil resovior set up on too

When I ordered mine , I had to give the center to center prop shaft measurement. There is adjustment , but it needs to be near the measurement and you can adjust the toe out from there.