Just a little background, I've been reading these forms(not as a member) for about 4 years. I don't have a mud motor and have only road in 2 and drove 1. However I have been drooling for 4 long years and will have one.

So I'm looking at a gatortrax 1750 and I always thought I would get a gator tail, however I was reading about cast lower units and cracking issues. Has this been resolved, if not is a mb 40 a better bet? It sounds like customer service will be bad on both motors. Plus living in Georgia I will probably be doing repair myself. I do live an hour away from a gator tail dealer.

GTR went back to the machined lower units.

Machined lowers now bro. The gatortail, I would imagine, would be easier to work on due to it being pretty simple and belt driven, but I have no experience with a mud buddy and no one I know runs them down here

look, i'm gonna lay it out for you.

go test drive all of the mm brands. u can do this for free. any dealer will do this.
then you can decide and make a choice based on what works for you.

godevil, gaytortail, mudbuddy, and prodrive are all reasonably close together, if you plan ahead you can demo all in 2 days or so.

beats wasting 10k on the wrong motor.

best of luck on your quest to get a new rig.

what works for me might not work for you, so keep that in mind when u get opinions on the .www !!!!!!!

All very good points bro. The gatortail was the purchase for me because all my buddy's run them, so I was familiar with them. The go devil long tail I have had over 2k hours on it and runs like a champ, so i would conclude that go devils strong point is longevity, pro drives have the best reverse, but arnt quite as fast as the belt driven boats in stock form, mud buddy's and boss drives are unknown to me because no one in south Louisiana runs them

The people at gatortrax seem to like the mb, I'm not sold either way. I'm going to try and find a place to drive them however I'm more interested in how they're made. I fix things for a living and cast stuff plus taking a beating never go together. The mb black death 5000 sure looks attractive, it looks like it's built just like a gt(as far as the her having a belt drive). IDK I've looked at the gator tail and found no faults I can see. Thanks for all your help.

they all break, no matter what u read on this forum, lol. the closest dealer or dealer approved mechanic shop should be a big factor when you decide on what to get as well. boats don't usually have issues once u get them setup, but it will always be something to check/fix on a mudmotor if you constantly use it, especially if u mod it.