A buddy busted his drive this past weekend and is looking to upgrade a Bravo to better handle a 8-71 blown 502. Please give recommendations of who makes the best drive upgrade from either your experience or someone who has used your choice. He knows all about the 500 hp blah blah blah, so he needs to know who's upgrade is withstanding punishment.
Thanks

Go to a hand built with original Merc parts XR Bravo and tell him to take some of that heavy hand off the throttle.

We decided to use a standard Bravo with XR gears (upper only). The failure in Bravo's isn't in the lower so why bother changing it , the problems are in the upper .

A company called L & L did the machine work and installed the stainless tower and my friend did the assembly. So far these have lived behind his 700hp 565ci motors. He's been thru 3 poker runs with them.
I would do this but I would use a different comany than L & L , my suggestion would be Billet marine, check their website out.
www.billetmarine.com

Or you can try an Imco extreme SC . Some people on the board have been using them.
Personally I can't afford a 10k drive.

He's hoping to get thru the rest of the summer without spending 10k on a drive. So I don't think a Imco is an option.

Sean-right on about the heavy hand, I've cautioned him about this, especially considering he has a 29' Scarab witha single drive.

Has anyone used the Teague Platinum series upgrade? What kind of dollars do these run?

I have the Teague Platinum XR unit and after 6 "blown" drives (other brands, not Teague), this unit has held up very well. I highly recommend the unit and Bob Teague is very helpful and extremely knowledgeable regarding the units. As far as price, I purchased the complete unit, it was cheap after considering I had gone through 6 other units with no help from the "other" guys. Teague warrantied the unit and that in itself is worth a great deal of peace of mind. Good luck, many have been down the "Bravo Blues" road and many different scenarios have been experienced with varying degrees of success, I am happy to have found a solution, that in my case has resolved "Blues".