Not mercruisers fault but two of my friends have had some issues with their outdrives. One spent 5000 getting it fixed. The other is still broken with a price tag of $3000 to fix.

The first being the Mercruiser Black Hawk in the high-freeboard 1995 22' daytona (running mid 80's with a 415HP 502 EFI). Blackhawk was in for routine maintenance, apparently the shop took apart the drive to grease everything and put something back in place so that caused the shaft coming straight down in the drive and the prop shaft to bind. It SHEARED the shaft going straight down through the outdrive. PW_tony has seen this boat


The second being a Teague Custom Marine Bravo 1 in a 20.5 Carrera Elite (running high 80's with a 720HP Teague Custom Marine 502 built 5 years ago).

This one needs new gimbal ring assembly among many other things. Apparently not made for that much power. Still runs but is real sloppy. Engine sounds mean as hell, drive thunks real hard

Do to the random gum flapping , the question was never answered . My understanding is that the hole the intake leaves is what drives everyone from doing this conversion .

My idea: To Balsa wood the entire bilge and then glass the bottom . Not in the order exactly but I think the wood would be a huge help in strengthening that area back up . Speed coat the bottom , wood inside , badda bing , badda boom . Yay or nay .

-beerjet-

Why not just build an aluminum plate and bolt and epoxy it in like an intake?

Aluminum can be speedcoated, you could plug that hole for a hundred bucks in a weekend...The problem remains, a transom of approx. 2-1/8" still needs to be fabricated. That's where the mad skills come in...Can be done, but requires some laminating talents.

GT

I just figured the wood looked pretty and would add some strength is all .I do remember that the transome would need to be beefed up considerably too . I picked up a sheet 1/4 aluminum plate about the size of an intake for $30 bucks so that does sound like a waaaaaay better way to go

-beerjet-

New to the sight but was reading this and one thing to remember. I/O drives require a lower idle speed than jets so when choosing a cam you might want to use a 118 degree centerline on big cams.

Anybody go the other way? I/O to jet? Pros/Cons?

Sounds like a lot of work.

I like this idea.

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

Anyone have any pics of swapping from the jet to I/O? Transome work, intake glassing? I have a 1980 condor 5.5 with a berkeley 12je and a mercruiser 260, I think I could get ahold of an alpha 1 for dirt cheap.. How much work would be involved.. I think I'd be getting in way over my head but I live in the ozarks in mo and my boat will be a lake boat and I'd love to own all those big 30 plus footer race boats around there. I'd be hilarious to see a lil ole jet boat with a sbc and a I/o hit a Hundo coming out of the no wake zone

Check out Ky0atk posts! I believe his bahner was already a I/o but he rebuilt the entire transom and cut everything in from scratch! He has a lot of pics and great info!