I have a older 8hp Evenrude (2 stroke) i took out for the first time this weekend. It seems to start fine and rand good for awhile but then it lost alot of power, ran better choked. Actually w/ the choke pushed in it studdered and died a few times. I'm not a motor head any suggestions?

Dirty carb or water in fuel........probably dirty carb. When you pull the choke on the engine, it is restricting the air supply and increasing the fuel, So what the engine is telling you is that the carb is semi-plugged. Needs to be removed and cleaned/reinstalled.

I actually have a carb rebuild kit for it. is that hard to do? I was hoping for a plug or fuel filter.

that carb is a pretty simple device...a service manual would be a good investment, but the kit should have instructions in the box. disassemble, soak the metal parts overnight in carb cleaner (I use B-12), blast compressed air through all the passages (aerosol carb cleaner makes a pretty good substitute for compressed air), reassemble, reinstall, adjust your slow speed mixture: http://forums.iboats.com/showthread.php?t=167352