As most of y'all know, I sold my boat and I am conducting research on my next boat. Most of my friends are tell me to avoid TRS drives and only get a boat with Bravos.

What this in mind, in what year did Merc start offering the Bravo outdrive? Was it 1990?

I have a Bravo in my 1989.

1988 was the first year, sealed drive with an oil dipstick on top like a Volvo. The stronger design with a drive oil bottle began sometime in the early 90's I think.

My '89 has a bottle. When I bought the boat I had the serial numbers checked and the dealer verified it was original to the '89 boat.

Maybe someone retrofitted the bottle?

Try running the serial numbers on Mercs website. My boat is a '98 but the motor it came with was a '97.

The Bravo came out in 1988 but had oiling problems until changes in the early 90s...
I would agree to stay away from older boats with TRS drives. I had one and the $$ for parts made me sell it...

Mine also is 89, with oil bottle design. They were available.

There are retrofit kits to add bottles to the older drives. My 88 Bravo did not have one. Yes, merc did make some oiling changes to the drive a couple of years into it's production. They also changed the bullet shape and the oil drain location. All of these are improvements, but in my mind wouldn't eliminate a potential boat. Do stay away from the big block alpha set up which was a 88 only deal.

Really?? I thought my blown up TRS lowers were cheaper to rebuild than my blown up IMCO Uppers.

Gears were around $700 in the TRS lower and the bearings were cheap, I would rebuild them myself. Merc wants $1000 for the gears in the XR style upper, plus parts; verticle shaft is $200 plus bearings.....

The TRS upper never blew up!! Now, if I could somehow put the TRS upper on top of my IMCO lowers I would be set!

I think he meant to say 1987 as the one year BBC/Alpha. A friend had a 30' Webbcraft with two of them