Anybody Try a Surface Drive(s) on a 28?
 

Just wondering if its ever been done. I've always thought a 28 with twin 350's and surface drives would be a great package.

Why some might say????? So I can go 80+ on a pair of 350's.
Why not just get bigger power????? Its cheaper to replace a 350 if one blows, and they should last longer. Also - less gas means that I get to boat more. :D

Very interesting proposition there Andy.

Plus that could mean a badazz rooster!!

I know a guy that had a surface drive on a single V with big power. Took him 1/4 mile to get on plane and then when he needed to stop, he had to get off the sticks and coast for a long time due to no drag at all.

He yanked the Arneson off and installed a Konrad.

Twins may work, but why would you need a surface drive on 350's?

To go faster. A twin with 6.2's will do around 70mph..............if the surface drives could get you to 80mph, then wouldn't it be worth it..........it would to me.

I think bow lift might be a problem

Quite some time ago I had installed some on a 28 cig but this was before the Bravo drive was invented. Power handling was necessary for the twin turbo 350's over the merc alpha style drives. If the hull has some rocker it should work well. From my experience with some Kaama Formulas and the Cig 28 I could not recomend arnesons for the 28 Pantera hull unless possibly it has the notched transom and maybe some added rocker in the hull and some huge power(ie 406 blower moters). Jo could shed more light on this subject though than I possibly could. Personally I would try some 3 inch shorties on one before ever going with arnesons because you could always return to stock if you needed to.

Does the parasitic drag of the trannies out weigh the benefit of running a surfacing prop (compared to a Bravo)?

No, I think the leverage to lift the bow is the limiting factor as to what hull will work well with surface drives. We even built a hull specifically for the arneson drive back in the early 80's( lots of rocker, pad bottom) and still had problems with bow lift. It was virtually uncontrollable with 300 hp V8 and the arneson at 45 mph yet could run nearly 60 easily with a tired 100 outboard in a 24' boat. Search on the Donzi classic 22 differences for the Blackhawk drive. The Blackhawk hull has a lot of rocker and that is what makes it work. Parasitic drag of the tranny is probably not a concern, The propshaft HP is probably very close to any standard IO type drive W/O a Transmission

Sean - you're using some big words there...

lets just see how that 28AT runs. or doesn't ;)