King Cobra to Bravo swap

[brendellajet]

I know most say to just find a different boat, but in this situation the boat I am looking at has been priced cor the fact that it has the King Cobra. Drive and power, so a swap seems worth considering. Mechanical challenges are not a problem.

Has anyone done this before? Drive in question is an 89 era drive and appears to be the least desirable of the KC offerings. Anyone have any success stories? Seems like this should be doable for $5000-$7500. Am I close?

 

[Outdrive1]

Good news is you won't need any fiberglass work to fit the Mercruiser transom.

You'll need a drive.
A transom assy.
Trim pump.
Upper cable and shifter bracket.
A new shifter if yours doesn't adapt to Mercruiser cables.
Drive reservoir. And bracket.
Coupler.
Fly wheel cover.
Possibly motor mounts.
Some OMC's used a trigger off the fly wheel for the ignition, if so you'll need a distributor and ignition.
You'll need a sea pump and brackets to mount it, and all the hoses. You can go Mercruiser style or do a pump off the crank. OMC has a pump in the drive.
If you have a y pipe, you'll need a new one and possibly some custom elbows made. If not you can blow it through the transom.

 

[Riverbound]

Interesting thread.

 

[brendellajet]

Outdrive1, thanks for the list. That sounds expensive. It looks like If I did buy this boat, I'd have to take a summer off to pay for those parts. Still I Think it might be worth it. I'll have to check out t the prices and see what the overall impact would be. The fact that it's essentially a bolt on deal is positive.

 

[Riverbound]

Why would the ball park price for this swap to be done?

 

[brendellajet]

If you used rebuilt parts it's looking like this could easily get to 10k. If you shop around a little you could probably save a couple grand.

 

[Crazyhippy]

Ive got a boat for sale with a 454/bravo in it, you could use all the stuff from it, sell the hull/trailer for a couple bucks, sell one of the motors...

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Flat Broke]

Without knowing what boat (I have a hunch it starts with an H and ends with a T) and power, is it possible that you don't really need to replace the KC? I understand if it's busted, parts are becoming scarce, and it would be better to swap it out. But based on the fact that OD1 says you don't need any transom work to do the swap, if the KC that's in there is workin, I'd just do maintenance on it (I'm assuming maintenance parts/seals are still available) and enjoy the boat. Put money aside for the "rainy day" when the bravo parts you need show up cheap on the web. Who knows, but then you might be on to the next boat.

Just a thought, and could be totally worthless input