I have a very heavy 2950 Proline with twin 350 Chevy v8s and Alpha I Gen II drives. Proline engineered the boat where it is almost impossible to work on the out part of each engine. I plan on repositioning fule tanks to get some weight forward. However, I noticed a Bravo drive the other day that appeared physically larger than my alphas and the props appeared to be 17 or so inches in dia. Perhaps MC learned its leason on heavier boats with alphas and went to bravos for more strength and the compacity for larger props that provide greater performance and less water slipage? I currently run 15.25" dia props and that is about as large as I can fit on the drive. I have used the "mickey mouse" props before and constantly go cavitation burns and destroyed the props. I was wondering if I could retro my alphas with bravo drives? Would I feel any greater performance? I have to push my alphas at about 3200/rps to get my heavy boat really on plane and moving at about 23-24 kts in flat seas and loaded with folks and gear. If any of you have retroed, please advise. thx
Howdy,
Yes, you *could* remove the Alphas and install Bravo's..........But you would have to remove the drives, gimbal mounts and engines in that order.
Then you would need Bravo drives, Bravo gimbal mounts, and would have to add raw water pumps to each engine in order to use the Bravo drives.
Switching to Bravo I drives you would likely NOT see much improvement in performance at all (other than what you would get with SS props) .
Using Bravo III drives would greatly improve hole-shot and cruising performance but plan on spending a fortune getting the drives, transom mounts and modifying the engines to accommodate the drives.
If you're using aluminum props, you might reduce the cavitation "burns" by installing stainless steel props (aluminum props do "flex" at high power settings so you might see an improvement)
I removed a single SS prop King Cobra and replaced with a same HP Bravo III drive and saw a HUGE improvement in hole-shot performance.
But understand, replacing 2 Alphas with 2 Bravo III's will NOT be cheap. It might be better to replace the boat with a similar Bravo III equipped boat.
Regards,
Rick
