Re: Alpha 1 gen 2 / bravo 3 swap
Here is everything I've learned from experience, observation, and the good folks here (some of whom have assisted me in the past on various issues)...
You first need to decide if the issues you're having are issues you can force yourself to live with. Boating is often about trade-offs. At our marina, the guys with twin 4.3s complain about how long it takes to get on plane (or to their destination) but don't complain much about gas; the guys with twin 7.4s complain about gas but don't complain much about performance. The problem you have can be fixed, but like any other problem, the actual question is are you comfortable in investing X dollars getting there. If you don't do that analysis first, you'll end up spending $2 to fix a $1 problem (i.e., you may be able to sell your current boat, and for the same money get one equipped how you'd like...it is a buyer's market).
If you want to keep the current boat and decide not to swap to Bravo III, a good place to start might be with a competent prop shop. You may have one locally, but you may have to find one on our side of the border. A lot of guys on the speed boat forums have a handful of shops in the U.S. that are very highly regarded and very willing to help. To save you a bit of hassle, the one I was just thinking about that a lot of performance guys use is BBLADES out of Princeton, Wisconsin (and no, I'm not affiliated or on their payroll!). At a more basic level what you'll probably find is that what makes aluminum props the "safer" choice (they are relatively less rigid than stainless) also means than an aluminum prop might not be helping you get your heavy boat on plane (since the blades aren't as rigid they'll tend to flatten as you try to plane). That leads you to a stainless prop, and not all of those are created equal. I'm pushing a heavy load with a single 6.2L and ended up with a stainless 15.25 x 18 (it was originally 15.25 x 19 but 1" of pitch was removed), after starting with an aluminum 14.5 x 19. A good prop shop will be able to get you dialed in to whatever blade profile it is that best fits what you're trying to do. And no, all prop shops are not good. In fact, the truly good ones are somewhat hard to find since that business model is built more on referrals than repeat business.
If you keep the boat and decide to swap to Bravo III, just keep in mind that each engine is still putting out ~200 HP. You certainly don't want to improve your traction to find that the power output of your engines is the next bottleneck. If you create expectations based on how much $$$ you're shelling out, and it can be an expensive path to disappointment. You can probably find some decent deals out there; I know that some of the local salvage yards are still processing boats from Hurricane Sandy, and there aren't a lot of folks spending that kind of coin on boat fixes (it seems to me that a lot more people are simply getting out of boating when something major breaks). If you do what Rick did and get engine and drive cutout packages, you can save the aggravation of waiting a week for a bracket, or wiring harness, or trinket or whatever to come in that you didn't realize you needed until two weeks before launch.
As for the economics of bothering to do it, I'll say this: Except in rare cases, it almost universally isn't a sound decision. And by rare cases I mean those where you find a boat with extensive structural damage, with twin Bravo IIIs, and serviceable 7.4s (that you can quickly sell), that an insurance company or salvage yard or whoever simply doesn't want to bother warehousing anymore so they're willing to part with it for a song. If you can find one of those deals (and they're out there if you know where to look, are persistent, and know how to negotiate) the whole thing might approach making sense on paper. Then again, very few things in boating make sense on paper. The other side of that coin is this: Not only should you look at the cash outlay today, but also years from now to get a better picture of how this thing fits into your bigger picture. For instance, if you invest $10K in the boat today, but could earn 4% on your investments over the next five years, that means you would have $12K in five years had you invested the money. This is a fundamental concept to think about, and is why people are generally advised to think long and hard about investing in depreciating assets (especially ones that are only used half of the year) - that investment in the asset gets more expensive each year relative to the returns from saving.
The last thing I've learned that I'll share is this: Absolutely do assign some value to your time (come up with an hourly "wage", which you can easily do by asking yourself how much you'd be willing to pay someone per hour to do this for you), multiply that by the number of hours you figure this to take, and include this figure when you do the math. Unless you literally have nothing else you'd rather be doing, undertaking this project will, at one point or another, come at the expense of something else in your life. For all of us, time is our most valuable resource and it is certainly worth something. I know it seems strange to work out some arbitrary figure to "pay" yourself, when you know you aren't actually going to cut yourself a check, but it isn't; it's exactly how you decide if you want to involve yourself in a project, or farm it out because it's not worth the hassle.
To give a bit of perspective...
Five years ago I was about where you are now - trying to figure out how to make a relatively large and somewhat underpowered boat perform how I wanted it to (or thought it should). There were a lot of late nights spent researching stuff online, asking questions on this forum and others, and fretting over things I now can't even remember. There was also a lot of money spent that I hadn't anticipated; once you start taking stuff apart, you tend to find that other things aren't right (or merit closer inspection) and "while I'm in it this deep" those things also get fixed. There was a bit of beer consumed, several funny moments shared with close friends who are good enough people to take time out of their lives to lend a hand (some of the stuff we laugh about to this day). Those aspects of my project, especially the memories, are almost unspeakably good.
But there was bad stuff, and plenty of it. At various points it seemed like the more stuff I took apart, the more problems I found. I take pride in my work, so I'm not one to put something back together when I know it isn't right, so this often meant that my personality was working against both my calendar and my checkbook. The internet is good for information, and at times it can be too good - I would often have a pointed question, and end up with tons of information and what would initially look like no definitive answer (we all have different ways of looking at things and doing things, and that tends to come out in a forum type environment). Depending on your personality, that can drive you nuts (which for me was a generally short trip). By the time I finished, I was about 100% over what I expected, and ended up paying about $700/MPH on the top end. Had I known that at the outset, I probably would have instead saved the $$$ for the next boat. And, at the end of the day, I still have a relatively big boat being pushed by a single small block; no matter how much I spent, I was always working against some constraint: The HP limits of a Gen 2 Alpha drive; the weight of the boat; the fact that a single screw small block is only going to be able to do so much.
Do I regret it? Not at all! But I can definitely say that if I had known then what I know now, I'd have lived with what I had and kept that in mind for the next boat.
