Just because the transome cover does not fit does not mean the pump won't fit.

And yea I know the outboard will be faster, have more room, and use less fuel, but thay are BUT UGLY and sound downright UNAMERICAN !!  I WANT MY BIG BLOCK !! There's nothing better than pulling out the baffeles and wakeing up the whole lake at 7am 

Merc UNAMERICAN?! Thats the original AMERICAN BOAT motor.. There's nothing better then quitely flying by the obnoxious dude with his baffeles out and the whole lakes sees it since he woke em all up....

**** that, fix it and run it. You will be happier doing that.
save the car motor for the car
fix it up and you can pull about 10k for it or run the piss out of it.

outboard on this one brotha.

I coulda sworn the boat tom was doing that conversion on was this boat.....

anyways....cool boat.....whats your plans with it?

wow, that is going to clean up into one really bitchen boat, again congrats on the score and glad to hear you got the title

Thats no fair though I think your boat is cleaner than mine.

Umm , No ! This thing is nasty !!!! That dirt on the left side of the hull is not dirt and it does not wash off !  I had to wet sand the right side and polish it to get it off  . Looks like years and years of no love  .

Also, I think your hull is a much better  / stronger starting point than mine and It looks pretty good to me.  And you got seats !  I dont have any of those  , one more thing on my list . 

SLCKREG ' s Daytona project, we're like twins almost  .  http://www.socaljetboats.com/index.php/topic,1874.msg24497.html#msg24497

 Oops, Kinda forgot about this thread (been busy with the little boat).  Here's a couple shots of it all cleaned up and running  .  I still cant believe the motor runs,  but I hooked up the batt today and it fired right up again.  I haven't done anything more to it, just wanted to update the thread.  I really need to finish that little Eliminator so I can get to work on this one.  I sat in it today (making vroom vroom noises) and I really think this is going to be a cool boat again someday. 

Looking for a round ear or a cleaver? I'll have to check what I have left but may have you covered either way, can that 300 turn a 28? Wow, have you thought of gearing up? The most efficient prop pitch is around 24"pitch (by efficient, I mean best bite, or less slip.) I have like fourty props, most of which were Demo's, I will be taking inventory soon (day or two).

Use good two stroke lube, (I really like Amsoil high perf. premix or their injector oil mixed at about 60:1) these motors have a tendency to "Ring Jack"(when carbon builds up behind the rings and galds the cylinder walls).

 If it were mine, with that jackplate and bracing, I would run about a 25" pitch cleaver, or a chopper, it will come out of the hole like an oversized poop, but once on plane should scare the holly hell out of you, overpropping an lugging the motor is as bad as overreving due to the heat build up in the cylinders. I will see what I have left and we'll do some "experimenting", I'm hoping you have the 1.62:1 lower, it would make it rare but faster than hell, when you pull the lower to replace the water pump count the rotations it takes to get the propshaft to go around once (two turns = 2.0:1)

Does it have solid motor mounts? very very important...

Something very few people know/understand, the more oil you run in the premix the "leaner" the engine runs, so "less is more"

I'm hoping you have the 1.62:1 lower, it would make it rare but faster than hell, when you pull the lower to replace the water pump count the rotations it takes to get the propshaft to go around once (two turns = 2.0:1)

Does it have solid motor mounts? very very important...

 Thanks for the advice GT.  It takes somewhere between 1.6 and 1.7 turns of the flywheel to get one rotation of the propshaft, (not sure exactly, its been awhile) might be 1.62  .  It does shift into gear  (forward and reverse) and appears to have some sort of drive ratchet ?

 Motor mounts   It has motor mounts   Where would they be   You can tell I'm a real expert on OBs, cant you  . 

 Also the propshaft is about about 3" or 4" below keel (the lowest setting on the brackets), and the lower unit has no low water pickup (cant find one for this old beast).

 Is it hard to change the waterpump ?

 A little history on this thing.  When I got the boat the owner didn't know if it ran or not (never tried to play with it), so I assumed it was junk.  I bought it just for the hull (I always wanted one).  I did a compression check and it had the same compression on all 6 cylinders  (+/- 10 psi).  I shot some 2 stroke oil in the cylinders and it started to even out more (haven't checked again it now that it runs).  When I finally figured out the wiring  and tried to start it, it ran on three cylinders  .  I started checking things and found no spark on 3 cyl.  After a lot of this  it turned out to be a bad switch box .  I got a deal on a set of used switch boxes (changed both) and it started right up ( in a HUGE cloud of smoke !!! ), it ran rough but cleared out after awhile. It does not use the fuel pumps on the motor (it has a holly blue pump and regulator, 5 psi),  and someone in the past did some modifying on the cover over the carbs.

 You now know everything I know about OBs

I have a free box of crap for you (not literally), Its a complete ignition/charging system from a Mariner 2.5 and should be the same as yours. BTW we used to call the Black Max's B/M's

  I love free crap 

 Motor mounts,  I cant feel any wiggles from the motor.  If i push really hard on the top of the motor the whole boat / trailer moves first.  I think these are the lower ones  , right , there are plastic covers over them.  They look to be solid inside ( I poked around in there a little and everything felt like metal, cant really see the upper ones

The nose cone and LWPU you need is actually for a gen.2 Alpha series drive, with some minor modification works tits.

Is this something you can do ?  I was told the lower unit on these motors was there downfall (if you break it throw the motor away, no parts available, and nothing will interchange).

BTW these things normally use about 3psi fuel pressure at the most.

 That might explain a few things  (slightly rough/erratic idle), pushing fuel past the needle and seat ?

A cleaver type prop is a "transom lifting" prop and will make that tunnel really work, but a "chopper style" would make it much more driveable (makes "slop" count the same as "skill"  )

"Slop" count as "skill" !! That's for me !!!  But I was thinking something basic just to get an idea what the boat/motor wants.  And for me to learn how to drive this thing  ( first OB and first tunnel ).  I was told something like a 28 pitch bravo would be a good all around starter prop for this thing, but I have no idea if thats right or not ??  I just know that this motor is not suposed to be able to spin high rpm like the new ones.

 BTW , Thanks for all the advice on this thing its really hard to find any info on this old timer (worse than a V8 Evinrude)

Well, it's tomorrow and I didn't get home early enough to do a damn thing pertaining to boats, had to replace the fan in my refrigerator, find out why my washing machine sounded like it was doing dry burnouts in a high school parking lot, and reload all my network settings on the home network so my wifeepoo and daughter could print their homework, sorry for the threadjack but I'll get to you tomorrow propless, TTFN