351 Ford with King Cobra

[Noe de la Garza]

Hi, left the boat shop this morning with a new project in hand. We are converting my 1991 200 Horizon Four Winns that currently has a 351 Ford with a Cone Clutch King Cobra. What we discussed and wanted to get some opinions is the following.

I am going to purchase an Alpha GenII transom Assemly and mount an SEI drive to it. I will have to drill to holes in the transom to make the assembly mount, but besides that it should slip right in. Also I will have to find an old 351/Merk flywheel and coupler and maybe do some other minor work such as exhaust and water. The water portion should be easy, all I have to do is cancel the water pump on the ford motor and use the one on the SEI drive.

Question, which drive is recommended for this project and has anyone else done it?

I saw on the forum there is a couple of guys with SEI's with a 351 which tells me it is possible. All I have to pray is that the transom cutout fits that genII assembly. Which I have heard from a couple of people it does.

Any recomendation?

Thanks

Noe

[admin]

For starters, the king cobra drive is more similiar to a bravo drive in size and strength, so that would be a better swap. Mercruiser did use the alpha drive with a 351, but they used a 1.32 ratio for the drive which is a bit stronger than a 1.47.

If you did decide to swap over to an alpha, you would want to go with a gen II style which our SE116 will replace. It has a better water pump than the gen I and would allow for a gear lube bottle in the boat.

As far as I know, the cutout is the same.

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