I have been searching for the last month and a half for a counter rotating alpha 1 gen 1 right now I have 2 standard rotating drives. They sell those SE stuff but im a little scared of that stuff and new mercruiser stuff is pretty expensive does anyone know of a shop around st. louis that I may wanna try I tried every shop I know of around here any help would be great

anyone

Any used CR Gen I Alpha that you pick up will be a gamble, with 20+ year old parts in it. The SE stuff with a warranty might be a better way to go, if you can talk to people that have bought them.

anyone know anyone who has used that se stuff

Not the CR unit, but I am running a std. rotation SE on my powerplay. I had it on for about 4 years now and have had no issue's.

I was just thinking about this I read all you have to do to install the counter rotate is swap the shift cables but then what about the impeller setup is it still a standard impeller

not on alpha's..bravo yes

I would just get an SEI drive. I have never heard of anyone having problems with them other than the paint is not that good.

I had a 87 Scarab that had Alpha drives on it and one was the CR drive. To answer your questions, The impellor is the standard one, it does not spin backwards. On the CR alpha, the only thing that spins reverse is the lower gears. It was told to me that the CR drive has a slightly beefed up reverse gear(which is actually the forward gear). It was always a pain and was the one which would blow up, but I did have 454s pushing them. Whenever I replaced one I got it from Jasper Engines as a factory rebuild.

I think all you need is the lower unit. Last time I looked the SE's were around $800 for a CR lower.