Blackhawk Drive
 

Gary Mizenberg @ Fox River Performance Marine ( 501 South Main Street ) in Oshlosh,WI is probably as familiar with the Blackhawk as anyone around. He has great experience with that drive.

He can help with most any Blackhawk problem or question.

Good luck.

I've heard different opinions, can you keep the blackhawk uppers and replace the lowers with a Bravo1?

I had a blackhawk on a 22 Scarab with 630HP
The boat ran very stable and straight at 92MPH
awesome rooster tail.I had to start in in gear alot because switching from forward and reverse
hit very hard.The boat idle at 900rpm and and put out a very large wake.There is no slip in the props.I ran 29s with the 1:50 gear
If you let off the gas to fast the torque steer is very dangerous its like slaming on the brake and going rigth with no control.I had to get off the gas slowly.The best thing to do foe idleling around was put a navagater on the top of the outdrive which is a type of trolling motor to move
around the dock and stuff.Its almost like running a arenson drive.

deboatmon-so how do you know Gary? I presume you're refering to Senior, not Junior. It seems that everybody that's remotly associated with the blackhawk knows Gary.

BlackHawk info...
 

Marty...

I just hung a BlackHawk off of my boat in the stock Bravo 1 location. I have '97 Donzi 22 Classic. This is what I know about the 'Hawk. In the stock Bravo 1 location it runs rather well, more like a shorty Bravo. I do not have it propped right, my 454MAG setup cannot spin the 29P props I have on the drive faster than 4100-4200rpm without over-trimming. I did get a 3-4mph increase even with the drive set way too low. I went from 68 to 71mph. If I had the right props... anybody got a set of 27P's I can test? I am sure I would see another 1-2mph. My plan is over the winter, to install an IMCO extension box, that moves the X-dim up 3" and the props back 12" (Thanks Marty & John for helping to put this NBA deal together!) This should put the drive at approximately the right height. It also has the advantage of moving the props further back into cleaner water. I'll have the test data for that next spring. Give me a call... I'll tell you all about it.

The case is a sandcast 1 piece unit. The weakest link is the same as in all Mercruiser products, the upper gears. However, BlackHawk is right about the gears etc. The gears are standard Bravo 1 uppers and standard Bravo 3 lowers. Bravo 3 props will work, however, they are not effiecient as they are not designed to be surface piercing. They also do not come in a steep enough propeller pitch. If the drive is set too deep, they do work well. Mercury has an upgrade kit for the BlackHawk that replaces just about all of the internals with new, much beefier components. For a drive that is no longer in production, there is still some R&D going on. The hardest part of a BlackHawk drive is finding propellers. They are starting to get rare.

I disagree about needing the rocker in the hull... I think most boat mfg's really did not know what to think of this drive, or how to utilize it. I got it straight from my source at Donzi there was way too much rocker in the BlackHawk hulls. My hull does not have any rocker, and several people can attest, it runs nice & flat & flies straight, no porpoising, no squirrely handling, no ill manners at all, except docking... Now it seems, everyone is running high X-dims and surface drives are the rage... time to re-release the BlackHawk...

Woodsy :D

Rocker in hull
 

Woodsy, I agree that the Donzi Blackhawk hull has a little too much rocker in it. My boat constintantly needs tab in the mid-range. But a V-hull has to be able to generate SOME bow lift without a lot of positive trim or the blackhawk will not work. A lot of deep V's have a slight hook in the bow which would not work with the blackhawk.

Raising your X should help you get some more speed. Are you running 71 on GPS right now or speedo? Who do you talk with at Donzi?

Have you learned the "coast in" method of docking yet? :)

I know this is an old thread, but I'm looking at a Black hawk. So what I'm reading is that props are the hard part and the drives share the same upper as Bravo's and same as III lowers. Any inside about the handling quirks ?