It's a Lot cheaper to just re-build a tansom and raise the drive a couple or three inches, thats what I did to Red's Gold, I set the transom back 6 inches and raised the drive 3", that didn't change the balance of the hull because that motor was 200 pounds lighter than a stock 260hp. Most all the SS drives had a 1.32 ratio, and that was a good thing if you had the torque and hp to spin it, but thats a bit expensive to accomplish with a small block. I have the Alpha One with the 1.32 SS gears and bearings that I had built for Barb's boat by a builder on lake Havasu, but it's not a shorty, and I thought that motor would spin it, but it didn't really do very well, we had to drop pitch from a 23 to a 21 to get the rpms back up, the boat still ran pretty good, but not what I expected. I ran that drive when we first put the stroker in her boat and it turned 5200 rpm with the 21 pitch powertech speed @ 71 /72 mph, then we put the Gen II on the boat with the 25 pitch PowerTech and it turned 5100 /5200 rpm at the same speed, but with an amazing exceleration.
The shorty's are getting Hard to find, only made them two years I think, they are really expensive, the gears and bearing is bigger and tougher alright, but it takes some serious horse power to get them to perform, normally produced by a big block motor.
