Recently bought my first boat & joined this forum because it has already answered a lot of questions. The boat is a 1984 Thunderbolt. Trying to find information on these boats has been a challenge. Were they actually Mercury boats? I've seen on here "Thunderbolts" from the 70's and back are Mercs. The one I purchased has a 75hp Suzuki 2 stroke titled from the the same year. Would this be a replacement motor? 

 Since this is my first boat, this is all new to me. I've seen people say that the oil and gas should run out around the same time but the gas tank doesn't look 37 years old. I believe it is a 10 gallon tank. We went through almost a full tank & the oil was approx 3/4 empty. Does this seem near the correct ratio? 

 My last question may seem basic but today when out on the lake, I was in the boat alone, most of my gear was in the floor or in front of the dash, and the nose just did not want to level out. I had the motor trimmed all the way down before accelerating & got about 1/2-3/4 throttle and it just kept pointing to the sky. With the wind about 15 mph & chop on the water I just slowed down to level it out and eased it the rest of the way. Numerous posts on here have said to trim down or redistribute weight but I was trimmed all the way down & didn't have anything else I could put on the nose. Any tricks to this or do I just need to carry some weight if I'm riding solo?

 Any tips, tricks or just general knowledge of these old boats will be appreciated! Thanks!

Proper oil usage is approximately one quart of oil for 12 gallons of gas.

I've seen Thunderbird boats, but no Thunderbolts.  Mercury use the Thunderbolt for the ignition system name on their motors back in the 60's/70's but never knew of a mercury boat called a thunderbolt.  I spent most of the later 70's and early 80's in Italy, and even when I got back to the states, I spent most of my time in special duty assignments for the next bunch of years so I was pretty much out of contact with what was going on in the real world during the 80's

I'll have to get exact measurements on what I can hold and monitor it over the next few outings. I've been trying to upload a picture of it but I can't get the file size small enough. It's a brown and creme boat with a brown bolt down the side with a "Thunderbolt" plaquard on the rear. 

 Sounds like an interesting career though, I appreciate it! 

It may have been one of the many regional boat builders back then that only managed to develop a market in a couple surrounding states before they finally had to close the doors.

Looks like they were out of Cleburne Tx back then and folding their doors in the late 80's

 Thanks for finding that. Makes sense, that's about 3 hours from where I live and where the original owner live.