Keep in mind that hte weak part of an alpha is actually the housing. The gears get alot of blame but most of the time the housing flexes aloowing the tolerances to grow too much on the upper case . When this happens it allows the gears wich are no longer meshing properly to either hammer together or pull apert so far that is starts breaking teeth . Once either one of these happen your pretty much screwed. Thye case is aluminum so big torque numbers with steep prop and heavy throttle action= flexing(especially if your already loaded up and the drive is building alot of heat. So run a drive shower and stay away from the big steep props and the jack rabbit starts. Any of you that have any experiencew with the alpha drives on the bigger boats(cabin cruisewrs and such)Can probably testify that the alpha isd fine as long as you dont load it up too much. If you are running a heavy boat like a 24 foot cuddy cabin with one you really shoul leave an aluminum prop on it and go to a 4 blade for increased performance.The aluminum props take alot of load off of the drive because they flex.