Outdrive Replacement

Little Ducky

Well-Known Member
Jun 5, 2017
2,652
Dickson, TN / Chattanooga, TN
Boat Info
1998 290 Sundancer
Engines
Twin EFI 5.0L w/Alphas
Kohler 4kW
Any suggestions in a company(s) selling remanufactured outdrives that have a good track record?

Mine are pretty corroded and might at least do some research on replacing vs spending time and money getting them to hold together a few years longer.

Plus I just cracked the cavitation plate on my port drive. :mad:

Thanks
C
 
Sterndrive Engineering - SEI. On an Alpha I replacement that is probably the route I would go.
I have an SEI106 (Alpha I Gen I) on my 1985 Cobalt and it performs well. They're about half the price of a new Merc. I would not hesitate to buy another if needed. Good support as well.
 
Sterndrive Engineering - SEI. On an Alpha I replacement that is probably the route I would go.

I’ve well documented my experiences with SEI on our 290. Basically I killed two lowers a year apart of each other within about 100 hours runtime on them. One blew the clutch gear up and the other sheared the vertical driveshaft from a complete lockup of the propshaft.

Now, the positive. They replaced both units free of charge but it cost me a haul and 2 weeks of downtime each time (they require the old one back first)

They said incorrect break in procedure was followed, which is true because my dealer didn’t tell me about it and they had 2 hours on them when I bought the boat. If there’s any truth to that I don’t know, but the replacement have been fine and I correctly broke them in. It takes 10 hours at varied rpms

If I had to replace them I would personally do OEM CPO drives, but the cost difference is significant. I also believe our boat is at the edge of what an alpha can really do just based on weight, so I like OEM gears for the job.
 
I agree that Alphas on a 290 are about as far as you would go with that package. I've said before on other threads this forum that I have an '85 Cobalt 23' with a small block 383 Stroker motor that was in the boat when I bought it. I have o idea of the horsepower but a machine shop that freshened the motor a couple of years ago thinks it in the 350-400 range. Not really what I wanted to hear knowing that an Alpha drive is sketchy above 300 HP.

I made this statement on a Cobalt forum and a rep from SEI that was lurking stated they believe the SEI106 will handle that HP. When asked if they would put that in writing he replied, "no comment." I just got my boat back together a couple of weeks ago and so far all is well but I don't stuff the throttle, I don't jump wakes....intentionally, and I rarely run at WOT for more than a short period occasionally. I think the drive will be fine but I'm not going to intentionally see if I can break it.
 

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