The 1st one or 2 years of the xr had problems with the upper pinion gear wearing prematurely and most barely made it 100 hours. Others have spent 10 g's for imco drives with no warranty under the impression it should hold up to their upgraded power only to have one fail in 10 or 15 hours. So their are a LOT of people with hard feelings from their experiences. Me on the other hand,I EXPECT my upgraded bravo based drive to fail after a 1/2 season because I'm running serious power so when it happens its just part of playing the hp game. If a guys running 800 or 900 hp and blows a drive its expected but if you bought a2001 hp 500 or 525 powered boat and blew a xr drive after 1 and 1/2 seasons just out of warranty as has happened to MANY people your patience would wear thin,Smitty

Well said Smitty. Okay.....sounds like most if not all complaints are about internals of the IMCO -2" shorty, and from what I have been hearing the past several years about IMCO's parts with all their failures and upset customers as a result is pretty much old news (at least to me), but--------what about the outer design of the IMCO gearcase design itself....i.e. nosecone shape, cavitation plate, etc.?

I'm having Mr.Gadgets set up the internals on my -2" IMCO shorties with Max Machine internal parts and Mr.Gadgets' assembly techniques. In fact, for the sake of arguement, let's say nobody never had problems/issues with the internals no matter whose they are-----so, that being said; has anyone ever had problems with the IMCO shorty lower gearcase shape/design itself ? Or does everyone pretty much assume it is a good design from IMCO without issues/problems?

Smitty,
Well summed up as to why Bravos " just suck."

Kaama,
We all know Dick is the man when it comes to drives. He has hepled me with my first rebuild of my XR/Imco. I have a standard length Imco with no issues related to the shape or design of the lower.

720 hp ea., 30 hrs (mostly in the river), two broken uppers and $8K later.....

I'm moving onto greener pastures!! ....hopefully.

you guys are funny ( not that I am a huge bravo fan) but 700 plus HP is way too much on anybodys bravo style drive if you want to run that much power your choices are speedmasters or surface drives . other than that count yourself lucky if you make it a season . we tried that on a 36 foot cat and they lasted 4 days ( they were bravo 1's in 1996 not xr's) we switched to #5 's and forgot about the drive issue

That may be true if you are running old style Bravo 1 drives. But, I would expect that if you treat it right, an Imco SC or a good "XR" would last the season. Especially in my case, 680 hp, 4000 lb boat should not be a problem.

For a little bit more you can buy a freshened Demo B-Max drive with a warranty

Does it make much of a difference if the engine is NA or supercharged? I was told that bravo style drives have a longer life with a NA engine. Does the torque hit earlier on most supercharged engines? Asking because of my new 700 hp NA engines.

JimV used to run a 565cid supercharged engine in his 27' Fountain, a few years ago and if he wasn't breaking drives all the time he was always having trouble. Honestly, I don't know how often or at what frequency he was breaking the Bravo One drives on his boat, BUT---since he removed the supercharger and went the N/A route----he is MUCH happier even though his boat goes about 8mph or so slower.

If I was running some Speedmaster drives I would probably be more apt to consider supercharged engines, but I'd rather be a little slower and still running instead of super fast and not running all the time. The summers are just too short around here!