You'll need to swap distributors for a passenger car/truck type with a vacuum advance, or the gas mileage will be lousy. Im general, the Mercruiser engine will be somewhat of a hotrod, with a more radical cam and higher compression, so running midgrade fuel would be a good idea. I think some of them ran a 2-barrel carburetor, which would also boost the high speed performance a little. You'll encounter a slightly choppy idle from the cam upgrade, so a standard transmission or a higher stall speed converter if you run an automatic trans would be advisable to prevent bogging down at low speed.
Jerry