JLB
Alot of good tips already posted here from these guys.
I just sent you a email with all the tips/instructions I send out with my Alignment tools.

Thanks for to instructions! Im tackling it on Monday....this will help out alot!
Once again I appriciate all the help

Ok this alignment thing turned into a nightmare!
I rented the tool....pulled the drive (simple & thanks guys for the advice), put motor in boat & attempted to use alignment tool...for...6 FREAKING HOURS! I tried to get it to slide in but could never get it! well guess what....they rented an OMC tool to me!!!!!!! I made a tool to measure the bearing race, the coupler spline etc and found it was way different than the OMC alignment tool! GRRRRRRRR!!!!!
I took it back and after a few choice words, got the right tool.
This time when i slid the tool in and made motor adjustments, the drive splines wouldnt line up. I got in boat and attempted to turn motor over by hand to align the splines....guess what?.....I couldnt turn the motor over....not even with a 3 ft leverage bar on balancer!!!! Could the motor be froze up!!??? how could it? it turned over when I pulled the motor and was replacing parts....made no sense to me! WELL GUESS WHAT? the new coupler came with new bolts...wel lthe new bolts when used with the new lock washers, caused the bolt heads to embed themselves into the aluminum flywheel bell housing cover!!!! I had to pull the motor AGAIN and replace the bolts with new bolts.
Now i get the motor back in....do another re alignment....got it as close as I could get it (tool pulled out with three fingers and just very little effort) and throw drive back on.....tow it home from friends home and start the re assembly of all the additional parts....& yup you guessed it...GUESS WHAT??!!!!! the shifter wont pull out of forward gear....pull the drive off and after some tinkering, find that if i turned the prop while drive was off just before putting it back on, it would cause the shift fork not to line up....fix that and BINGOOOOOOOOOOO back in business!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A one day job took me 3 1/2 days, a lot of foul mouth comments, bruises, cuts, anger management classes and a wife that wasnt to happy with me LOL....but I managed and now its back to the water to enjoy the Florida sunshine, family & boat drinks

Glad you got it fixed. Learning is often painful. But next time it will go that much smoother.

Amost forgot to mention this one....when I disassembled the motor accessories, the bot sat for a week or so and the power steering fluid reservoir tipped over and fluid poured out....Well dumb me & buddy took the newly assembled boat to the water at 1am in morning....right after finishing the boat. We put in at a local river that dumps into the bay...we start it up, check for leakes and push off....well because I forgot about the power steering fluid...we ended up with no steering!!!! and floating down stream! boat would only do circles....I tried to slowly force the steering and POP! I messed up the steering helm unit....it has about 2 inches of play / no steering at a certain point....
I found about 4 ounces of steering fluid in boat and was enough to get us to the dock...ran to the 24hr store and got some...added it and off we went again lol...boat ran perfect! but steering has that slack....if you turn it left or right, past that point, it steers fine...only when you hit that one point does it have slack / feels like it free moves that 2 inches worth...so thats my new repair lol

Thanks Dave M! that is soooo true...Im actually "kinda" glad ...now.... that I ran into those problems, as wierd as that sounds...I learned so much! and I feel so much more comfortable with my boat and its setup now.