This boat has the original motor that came with the boat at least it seems that way.both boat and motor are 74's. its so funny to see a 135 hp that has a manual trim for the motor. Meaning there is no trim. You unlock the motor and drop it down to the choosen pin height. and it then has a helper type shocks that assists you to lift the motor back up to transport or store. Now thats what I consider old school. my old 25hp on my skiff and my 40 hp evinrude is set up like this, just have never seen it on a motor this size. I might keep it like that and just use that gimble bracket for my other 135hp that im gonna repower it with. I think it would be old school and make it seem like a classic. I also have a used only in freshwater seadrive bracket that a few guys on here have kinda talked my out of using (maybe). I want this boat set up light and simple kinda work boat style. This boat will mosly be used in shore striper, cheasapeake light, cheasapeake baybridge tunnel. with a total of six rods 1 cooler and 2 guys and a live well running the original dual 20 gallon saddle tanks, is a 135hp rude feasible power for this light load rate? Thanks everyone for all the help so far you are a great bunch of guys. I have the boat stripped now of consol, tanks and bench style seat and the old motor. I have a few questions for demoing the floor. question #1 Should i set my saw blade depth to barely cut out the ply wood but keeping the bottom skin and then laminate my new ply wood to the existing botom skin waterproofing my under side of my new floor? Or should i remove top skin,core and bottom skin and then glass the bottom of my new deck plywood and adhere it to the stringers then glass the top of the floor? the reason im asking is a boat guy told me that keeping the bottom skin them laminating new core to it is a method that can be used he said you just kinda scoop it out then roll out your resin to prepped bottom skin and roll resin on your precut core material then screw it to your stringers and put a bunch of bundles of shingle on top of the plywood to weigh the floor down till resin kicks. Also maybe a tip to some guys im sure its been done before but i came up with a easy way to get a rough template for your transom. I screwed my full sheet acx plywood to the out side of my transom today and pulled the plywood up tight to the transom with 3inch screws then just traced the template to the configuration of the outside of the boat. its gonna be a little big but i can fine tune it from there with a jig saw. Atleast you get your template close and saves a bunch of time measuring, Just an idea. I also went and bought a new digital camera today beacuse i will document ever step of this project because this will be my first project of this extent and want to help to show people that if they take there time and do there research that they also can rework there own boat. I will start demo this weekend so get ready for the pictures!!!