Had a question or 2 about the transom.

i.e. Has it been cut down? etc

No, it has not been "cut down". You can see this in the brochure pic below, the opening matches what is shown in the pic. (Short Shaft setup.)

There IS a notch cut on the port side opening.....we did not do that.

It was there when we bought the boat in 1982, so it had to have been for the original Merc for some reason. But I don't see any importance there.

We left the trim off when we did work to it a while back and sealed the top with 5200.