Mercury 800 Starter Removal

[briansquared]

I'm hoping to replace the starter in my 1971 Mercury 800 (serial 3056077). I'm new to outboards, but after looking at the manual and watching a few videos, it seemed like a pretty straightforward process, so I bought a replacement (Arco 5374) and got started. But then I hit a problem... I can't figure out how to remove the existing starter.

I've disconnected the two wires, removed the mounting bolt from the top flange, removed the nuts from the long bolts blow, and it won't budge. From what I can tell, it also seems to have a mounting bracket on the bottom holding it in place. Before I remove more things to try to remove the top and bottom brackets, are there any obvious things that I'm missing?

 

[briansquared]

In case this helps anyone in the future, I ended up removing that lower bracket, which allowed me to get the original starter out. The replacement didn't fit with the lower bracket, so I only mounted that from above (which is how the manual describes it).

 

[briansquared]

This is what that lower bracket looks like (attached to the new starter)