Quuestion about transom height

[tally20cc]

Good morning ,
I have a 78' Master angler 20 that I purchased as a project last July. Due to a remodel on my beach place and life just generally getting in the way , I've made basically no progress. That's fine as I built a 14x 32 shed off the side of my shop.
So it stays nice and dry and basically clean of debris.

I've never had the boat in the water, in fact never even cranked it until about a month after I got it home. I know crazy ,right? I wasn't really interested in the engine anyway. So yesterday I pulled the boat out from und its shed and gave it a bath, pulled out some wires to nowhere, and set there looking and pondering a course of action.

I decided to crank the engine and then I would winterize it. It's a 185 Johnson. It had about 30 hours on it since the previous owner had it completely rebuilt.

I pumped the primer bulb tight, turned on the water hose and it literally started so fast it startled me! Set there and ran for about 10 mins like a champ.

Well as I was pondering all around rebuilding the transom, which it needs I'm thinking about the raising it issue, and raising the floor.

Since this is a factory 25" transom with a 25' engine will the floor and transom need to be raised? Or has this been addressed by Seacraft with the extra 5" of transom.

Or.....Am I going to have to drop it in the lake (about 5miles away) and get a read on the waterline that way.
I plan on keeping this one and will put some kind of new/ new to me modern power on it somewhere in the135 to 150 range.
I guess a 135HO Etec is out of the ? now LOL and crying at the same time....

Sorry for the long post but any insight is appreciated.