Try to stay with anything that is under 34 years old

😂lol !

Good one.
🤣🤣🤣

What I was getting at is that the pre 90’s had a a shorter ( horizontally)
gear case, they were prone to blow out after the low 70’s, and some of them didn’t have provisions for the remote gear oil reservoir, they also didn’t have the internal oil passage between the upper and lower.

What are you going to put for power in it?

They are water dumps for sure, but you can't run dry exhaust through regular exhaust tips with rubber hose connections, so who knows what they were doing.

probably a 454 for now (next year) and then eventually something a little bigger and supercharged.

right, and I saw the rubber hose connections and thought the same thing.
They’d melt.

I'd save weight and go with a stroked 383 CI in that size boat. When my 32' comes due for engines I'm ditching the 7.4lx mpi's for stroked 383's to save weight and have equal hp/tq.