I recently bought a 23hp Gatortail with some aftermarket mods.(carb, exhaust, cam.) all the small stuff to add a little extra power. After building my transom up to 22" ( 1" higher than I was shooting for) I mounted it up and test ran it on my '98 xpress 1648. It took a lot to make it get up and on top of the water. It was like the motor was bogged down until I could get the prop half out of the water. The top speed I can get out of it is only 27 with an empty boat.

Problem 2
It pulls like a mother to the left. The whole time the arm is trying to push you out of the boat. The lower stump guard has the last half inch bent at about a 30 degree angle to the port side so that should be helping but it doesn't seem to be enough. I've heard that moving the motor over on the transom can help it steer easier but I'm not sure if that will help in this situation. Thanks for the help and I can post pics if they would help.

Just for comparison I had a 23 hp homemade surface drive on it previously and the boat would jump right on plane and run 27 just fine with it.