375stinger

has anyone ever used black hawks on a 42 cigarette revolution or a similar hull wiht preferably triples?

aTX427

I ran one on my 25 eliminator - I broke the first one after 5 minutes Bravo HP gears and the second one after 19 hours with XR gears. I had a whippled hp500efi, which was the primiary problem. I would expect that 500hp would be the max. The accelleration was awsome - huge rooster tail - 12mph gain on the 5850 rev limiter with 1.36 gears and 31" props - the tallest setup available. Air Packer has the same set up with the HP500 and I think he is running mid 90's. Too bad they stopped developement. Like others said they use bravo 1 upper gears and bravo 3 lowers. I believe they are 5.5" shorter than a bravo and do provide natural transom lift. They also had removable SST floors - later found in the X-series. I found them to work best with no extension box.

Cord

375-ask yourself a question...does your boat take any positive trim to run fast? If you say "yes", then the BH is not your drive. The drive is not capable of picking the bow up at all. You need a boat that will naturally lift it's bow. Steps, notched transoms, rocker and lifting strakes that stop short of the transom are found on boats that tend to be naturally bow lifting.

The hp limit is proably a bit over 500 on a light hull, but definetly not on a heavy tripple application. If you ever fly the boat or fire wall the throttle when planing, we're talkin' frag city.

If you still fee the drive is what you need, then do call Performance Marine. For around 7k+ a pop you'll be able to walk out with 3 rebuilt drives. The last time I counted they had over a dozen.

Cord

john-I've been told that the XR gears do not fit the BH. Buy I've heard the same thing repeated several times. You sure they wern't the upgraded merc BH gear?

Edward R. Cozzi

I was the owner of the first triple application of the Blackhawk outdrive that had gasoline engines. There was also a diesel, Yanmar, boat that same year 1994. The boat was a 40' Hustler Fiore w/ 415hp 502 mag EFIs. Gary Miesenberg and I were on the phone weekly as my boat was really a test bed for the outdrive.

When all three of my outdrives were working the boat was awesome. Speeds in the 90s with a full cabin, air conditioning and refrigerator! 13,000+ lbs. was just too much for the clutches. Mercruiser gave up on the drive too soon. The heavy-duty stuff they have today in the XR and XZ drives would probably fix most or all of the problems I experienced in 1994 and 5.
Finally Mercruiser took back my Blackhawks and put on 1.50:1 Bravo 1s. I lost 10-12 MPH top end and the gobs of acceleration I had gotten used to.
When you speak to Gary, please tell him I said hello.

aTX427

Cord, I am fairly shure they were XR's - could have been xz. I know they were not HP gears, b/c that is what I put in them the first time it broke. I had IMCO do the work the second time - cost ~$3300.

Cord

When I had my BH rebuilt, I asked about using the XR gears. They said that they had tried that, but they didn't fit. They said that there was some sort of upgraded gear that was available from Merc. I wonder if that was the XZ gear. That would make a bunch of sense. I should just call Gary. After all, it was his son that rebuilt my drive.

Airpacker

Not xz gears either. Those are the same size as xr's, just straight cut instead of helical. The only parts that are hard to find ar props, gear cases and vertical shafts. I have been running 570hp thru mine for 38 hrs and so far so good. They work real good on the right hull and real bad on the wrong one. My 25 daytona went from 83.2 to 91.1 gps with the drive swap but cats carry the nose without trim once you get going fast enough. I was told by mercury that the program was dropped due to the cost of the drives being nearly 5 grand more than a bravo and at the time, very few hulls were set up to use them properly. I think mercury should bring it back due to all the small cats on the market now. It really is a cat drive IMHO.

pkspx

Bringing this post back. Does anyone know for sure, 100%, if the black hawk lower unit will bolt onto a Bravo upper unit? Will it raise my X dimension at all or do I need a complete black hawk drive to do so? Power Quest sets their drives lower on their boats but I have been told with the amount of power I'm throwing at the boat, i need to make my X Dimension higher.

pachangalpina

Would it not be cheaper to buy a shortie lower? I am sure yuo can get better internals than the ones in the BH drive.