Had a little time to go to my parents house this morning to work on the boat.
We ended up working on the motor instead. Got the 15hp carb installed with surprisingly no problems. Pumped up the ball and gave it a tug. 1st pull.....nothing. Little choke, 2nd pull....fired right up.
Let it run for about 15seconds before my dad shut the motor off and started cussing. There was no water coming out the "pee hole". So we took the lower unit off, took the water pump apart and inspected the impeller a 2nd time (pulled it apart after we 1st got the motor). It looked fine. We put it all back together and did a little looking. We could find no blockages or anything. so we put the lower unit back on. Dad said maybe he didn't get it on correctly the 1st time so he took extra precaution to get it back on right.
Started the motor back up and still no water coming out the "pee hole". Though there was water coming out the exhaust and around the prop. So we just figured on buying a whole new water pump kit and putting it in. Well with the knowledge of one of the fellow board members I did some research and found that 74-76 does not use the "pee hole" just the exhaust. We were really relieved to find that out.
Now on to even better news...My uncle had an older Minn Kota 36lb Thrust All Terrain Trolling motor laying around in his garage. He told us if we wanted it to come get it. We went and got it, hooked it up to the batter and pushed the button...nothing. Switched it over to continuous and it worked just fine. My dad just happened to have a switch that fit that trolling motor so we put it on and it worked just wonderfully.
Sorry for the rambling...not sure when we will get to work on it again but I'll keep this updated as we go.