OMC I/O 800 Swap out whats possible?

[firestorm]

First let me start by pointing out my wife will not allow me to spend a ton on this off budget project or I would just go buy the parts I am missing new and be done with it. In May I did some horse trading with our sales manger at work and ended up with a 1985 Cobalt 21BR in rough shape with the OMC 800 out drive missing. It was stolen while the boat sat on one of our out lots The nice guys who took the drive unbolted it and cut the shift cable and made off with it and a few other minor peices. It was a nice boat at the time that was 5 years ago it has sat unattended under canvas since so the interior is rough now. I have done a decent hull inspection and it appears to be in great shape with some minor issues that I can handle my problem is the outdrive after just receiveing my 3rd junk outdrive sold as good on ebay I am begining to think about just scraping the 800 and updating with something more current from a company still in business. I am aware of the transom issues and can handle filling in the hole and starting over there. Are there any places I can get specs and demensions for various drives so I can get a idea of how much differant the engine mounting and drive location will be? Has anyone done this swap and what were the results? I have no intention of spending more on the drive than the boat is worth fixed if it comes down to it I have very little invested in the boat and can sell all the junk on Ebay and just go buy a working boat later. I do however like the boat and it fits my needs well if I could just get it to move under power I would be happy. BY the way it has a 260 hp drive with power trim and power steering and a decent running low hours motor boat has 305 total hours and receipt shows complete engine rebuild at 287 hours so has very little time on engine and it fires and runs.HELP

[Gulfstream]

I have purchased 1982 Gulfstream Cuddy. The Price was good but I had/have alot of work to do. The question that you need to ask yourself is; " Are you going to keep it forever or just a few years? Realize that the price of everything is double what you expect. Another question is are you doing this take up as a hobby and realizing your time and money cannot ever be relaimed. If you are Ok with this then your are probably doing this because it is a challenge. My boat looked great so I bought it. I new it needed work but not sure how much. Within a week I found that the boat had a cracked block and a leak in the gas tank. I ripped out the old floor, 2 layers because the entire floor area in this boat is storage. I found that I had an aluminum gas tank (97 Gal)and someone had knicker a hole in it with a skil saw. Repaired the tank, repaired the rotting stringers and encapulated them in glass. Put down first layer of marine plywood, rebuilt vertical supports for the floor and glassed all. Put down second layer of marine plywood and glassed it too. Installed new marine carpet. Pulled motor. Built new motor, reusing only the valve covers, water pump, power steering pump, and fuek pump. New block, intake manifold, pistons, crank, cam and new edelbrock marine carb. Found the exhaust manifolds were also cracked and replaced. Guess what... Boat still won't get up on plane. Boat didn't have the same OMC drive on it that it had from factory, This one has been in the ocean. The OMC drives were called stringer drives 400(4cyl) and 800 (V6 and V8) the V8 had three different gear ratios. 305 CI, 350 CI, and 454 CI required different ratios. I think the wrong drive is on my boat. So I ask again why do you want to put money into this boat? for fun, hobby? or to use quickly.