Hats off to you Spare
 

Just finished replacing the bellows and outdrive cable on my buddys Wellcraft v20, 170. Didn't have a bellows expantion tool but worked the exhaust bellows on anyway.Aligned the gimble bearing and engine coupling and greased it all up. That was a pretty good job. Turned out great. Hats off to ya spare , knowing you're a boat mechanic, you gotta have a lot of patience.

back when I first started out, I hated doing anything associated with the transom assembly. Somewhere along the line, I figured out how much those jobs paid and no one else wanted to do them. I started asking to do those jobs till I got pretty good at them. I made a pretty good amount of money doing those back then. But that was in fresh water, now that I'm in salt, I run away from them. Its not that its that much harder, its just the job tends to snowball, you end up pricing yourself out of the job

Yep, where does it end. It starts off with a bellows change, and before you know it you have the whole transom assembly off replacing bushings, welding it to correct rot and corrosion, and fighting a frozen in gimbal bearing that's never been out and refusing to come out.