Hey John,
When you only have $600 in the whole boat, I can relate to how hard it is to wrap your mind around the idea of spending thousands of $ on a motor! I went thru the same thought process when I bought my new motor and bracket, spending about 3X what I had originally paid for the whole rig back in 1975! However, when I now look back at that decision 9 years later, I realize that I've taken almost 20 very memorable trips in it, many of which I would probably not have taken with the old motor. So if you figure that it's the memories of what you do with the boat that really count, then I've concluded that it was money well spent!
The Johnrudes are the only motors I'm really familiar with, and I'd avoid any of them made in the late 90's when OMC was in it's death spiral, maybe 97-99. A colleague of mine was the Chief Engineer at their Stuart, Fl. test center during the transition from OMC to BRP, and he said OMC was buying off a lot of deviated parts from suppliers during that time. The designs were fine, and any bad motors may not have survived too long, but I'd be wary of a low time "unproven" motor of that vintage! However he was very impressed with the BRP organization and he said anything made by them (2000 and later) are very high quality motors. BRP continued making carb'd motors for a few years (as Johnson's), but focused new development work on the DI (Evinrude Ficht and E-TEC) motors.
I'd look for a 2000 or later Johnson V-4, as they're much lighter, simpler and cheaper than 4-strokes but very reliable and easy to work on. The newer clean technology motors (both 2 & 4 strokes) run much leaner and are more susceptible to minor fuel starvation problems that can cause overheated/scored pistons, etc. A carb'd 2-stroke will probably tolerate minor fuel system blockages that can kill a newer high tech motor! I think I'd also avoid the early Merc Optimax motors, but Big Shrimpin, Doodlebug and/or Fr. Frank can all provide good advice on the Mercs.
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