I skipped over painting the boat since my main concern was getting in on the river. I kind of worked on the motor and framing/decking at the same time.
The outboard is a 35 hp Mercury 2 stroke built in 1985. I started out not knowing anything about outboards. I didn't even know how to change the oil in these things, so the first thing I did was download a service manual which gave me a pretty good foundation.
I first tried manually turning the flywheel and it wouldn't budge. After reading about outboards, this had me pretty worried; if the flywheel won't turn then the motor can't run. I next checked the oil in the lower unit. When I pulled the drain plug nothing came out except rusted metal flakes. I figured that had to be responsible for the flywheel not turning. After pulling the lower unit I confirmed that is what was locking up the flywheel. The good thing is that I got a spare parts motor with my initial purchase. Luckily the spare lower unit was in good shape. Before I put the spare on my motor, I went ahead and changed the impeller and replaced some gaskets. There was a lot of sand and small rocks in the water pump, so it's a good thing i decided to rebuild it.
The swivel bracket that mount the motor to the transom was also messed up so it wouldn't turn at all and wouldn't shift gears either since the shift linkage runs through this piece. I had to completely pull the powerhead in order remove the swivel bracket and replace it with the spare. I ended up cutting a pretty big corner here and I will need to fix it in the off season. Since I didn't anticipate pulling the power head I didn't order a gasket that goes between the powerhead and the exhaust housing. I ended up using red, heat resistant RTV to seal in place of the proper gasket.
My next goal was to see if I could get the motor to start. First I checked the compression and found that the top cylinder had 140 psi and the bottom had 135 psi. I had bought a transom mount trolling motor that came with a deep cycle battery which I used to try to crank it. Unfortunately, it wouldn't start. The starter would turn slowly but the pinion wouldn't engage the flywheel. After taking the starter apart and doing to internet browsing I managed to solve the problem by lubing the pinion shaft and upgrading to a 2 gauge battery wire.
Now I had the starter successfully engaging the flywheel and cranking with plenty of speed. I still couldn't get the motor to turn over unfortunately. Eventually I got the motor running by putting the motor in gear and giving it full throttle. I had to bypass the neutral start sensor by hot wiring the battery to the starter. It would run fine at full throttle, but as soon as you cut back the throttle it would cut off. So, I ended up rebuilding the carburetor and fuel pump. I ordered the carb rebuild kit from boats.net, I got the fuel pump diaphragm and gaskets off eBay, and a buddy of mine had extra fuel line that I used to replace all of the lines on the motor.
After some idle adjustments and a new primer bulb for my fuel tank, I have a running outboard motor!