thank you so much guys. im very suprised that many of you really owned liberators. right now i have the boat at my marina and they are going to find the problem for me and hopefully they leave me with enough money to put gas in it whens its fixed. thanks again.

I have a 1993 Grew 230 with a builtup 454 450Hp 500lbs of torque. I am in the proses of supergaring puting the Hp550and torque approx 600lbs. Will the outdrive handel this power.

[QUOTE=blown thunder]I have a 1993 Grew 230 with a builtup 454 450Hp 500lbs of torque. I am in the proses of supergaring puting the Hp550and torque approx 600lbs. Will the outdrive handel this power. At 450Hp the boat would run 64mph on the Gps at 5300RPM. Looking to run when superghared aprox 76mph.?possible.

Did you lose forward or reverse???? After many times of trying to solve my problem I found it to be as simple as the shift foot worn to much to push the cone all the way into reverse. Just goes to show ya don't skip the small things....
P.S. I learned when putting a new clutch cone in, lap them in they will last longer. Good luck

[QUOTE=blown thunder]
Didn't realize this post was that old....

Yes if the drive is set-up correctly it will handle that power no sweat.

I maintain my teenagers boat with a Cobra. Bypassed the switches and rigged a NO contact switch at the throttle. Just bump it an the ESA will let it come out of gear with little to no pressure. The switch/cable adjustment is not hard, just seems to take a lot of upkeep even with normal stretching. Use the switch to fire a relay that closes the switch to the ESA. I figure when the ESA dies I will find a way to ground about 3 or plugs from the distributor at random.

Old thread and all that...

but... big difference between "kings" and "cobras"
Kings have a cone clutch like a bravo. Cobras (cobra 800) have dogs like an alpha.

The cobra 800 recalled shift cable was black. The replacement is red. Red cable good. Black cable bad.

The red cables don't stretch so much.

The ESA modules are available online for around 90.00 and can be replaced in a couple of minutes.

Once folks have the replacement cable and good ESAs they should be fine.

I have been running 20 year old cobras for three years and have had one cable adjustment.

One nice thing besides the fact that you can't break them with a smallblock, is the water pickup impeller can be changed without splitting the drive. Nice design touch.

Ohh... most people think their "Cobra" is a "King Cobra."

There was a graphics package for a couple of years that had the "king" name on the flame arrestor but the drives were actually regular cobra 800s.
In most cases the Kings were matched with the big block fords.

The small block "King Cobra" package, is actually called the "350 King Cobra". It's the 270hp version of the 5.7L, with a standard Cobra drive.
Can get confusing!
Fund is right. With the replacement cable (actually it's a complete kit. Cable, bellcrank, small parts, etc), you shouldn't have any shifting problems. In case you didn't know, there was also a replacement spring for the shift assist lever, because the early one was too stiff, and the SA module was not getting activated (hard shifting). The cable adjustment is also critical. It has to be done right.

Hello I am new here, obviously. I have an 89 Donzi Z-25 with a 460 and a KingCobra. I have had to replace the drive 2 times since I bought the boat a five years ago. I assume that it is related to the hard shift problem everyone else seems to have with these drives. Could someone give me some specifics on the "bypass procedure" that is described here? Also, when I have enough money to replace the drive, is there a way to replace it with a modern Bravo without replacing the engine too? My engine is strong and I don't like the idea of spending $10,000+ all at once to make the boat reliable. I would like to refurb this boat but cannot afford to do it all at once.

Thanks,
Chickendog