OMC sea drive outboards

Anybody run and maintain OMC sea drive outboards before? How are they?

 

A friend of mine opposite me in the marina has had one for years and loves it. He has had no problems outside of normal maintenence. That being said, finding a qualified tech to work on them is an issue and parts are soon going to become more difficult to find as OMC went out of business in 1998 or thereabouts.

 

I thougtht Sea Drives were great.
I installed several V4's and V6's upto the end of the crossflow engines.
I thought it was a brilliant idea and OMC had many technical advances in the bracket BUT
The single biggest cock up was they gave the product to the sterndrive team instead of the outboard team and hence once fitted the engine was all but impractical to alter its height ( trim pump motor went through the transom)so many engines were installed too deep.
The gearbox was well aft of the transom so it could stand to be quite high.
This was early days of running motors on brackets and the industry was learning about it.
It was very suprising how well they performed when you put set on a boat that would normally have stern drives of much higher horsepower and the Sea Drive performed as well with less horsepower.

You will get engine parts but the bracket is going to be your problem in the future.
I think the parts manual has just been dropped from brp site?