orange/blue stripe goes to the top cylinder. You can use an older gearcase on your motor, just be aware the older gearcase has a 2-lug clutch dog, the newer ones have 3-lug clutch dogs (better, more durable).

Your older driveshaft should have a notch for an o-ring. This is not needed on a newer motor. There is a seal at the bottom of the powerhead to accomplish the same thing.

If you are converting the longshaft gearcase to a shorter one, just swap driveshafts (so, duh, guess you don’t have to worry about the o-ring comment), and swap out shift shafts. Those simply unscrew.

You need to switch the impeller housing water tube grommet to be the type with a small orifice, not the big ‘ear’ grommet. Credit to Fleetwin for pointing this out earlier in the year. If you use the big ear grommet, it traps water in the exhaust housing which will find it’s way backwards into the powerhead via the exhaust ports if the motor is lied down on it’s side or upside down.

If you convert from a longshaft motor to a shortshaft, than you may need to trim 5" off the water tube. You can do just the opposite to convert from a short to long, just use hose clamps and fuel line to combine a 5" copper tube to the short shaft water tube. It will take a little bit of lining things up to make sure everything fits together the right way but once the longshaft exhaust housing is put on, you’d never know the difference.

Wiring diagrams are available in a service manual but are pretty simple. Lead from the mag plate to the powerpack (or straight to the coils if you have UFI ignition). For regular CD ignition, powerpack leads go to coils, coils to plugs. Mag plate lead and is held to the powerhead via a clip on the upper exhaust bypass plate. Powerpack ground may be at the same place or under the top powerpack screw. Powerpack lead is routed on top of the powerhead, there should be a metal clip at the top of the thermostat cover plate bring thing lead out to the coils.

Kill switch leads: 1 wire is grounded to the bottom screw of #2 coil, other lead either goes to the black/yellow or white stripe wire off the 5 connector powerpack lead, or the black wire off the mag plate 4 connector lead. Depends on what’s been done to the motor over the years.

People hack the hell out of these things all the time. Use bullet connectors or shrink wrap splice connectors in the case of splicing wires.

And MAKE SURE your screws, washers, fiber washers, and star washers are configured correctly on the coils and powerpack grounds. Doing this wrong with cause you all sorts of headaches. Most people don’t bother to do this right and it will cause all sorts of false positives or potential other issues (bad grounds or low output, for instance). Consult the service manual to make sure these are right!