Installing a tower

This is a bit of a tangent to the buying a tower thread so I thought I'd start my own. Does anyone have some good tips for tower installs? The tips I'm aware of:

-USE masking tape for initial alignment
-Drill backwards to prevent spider cracks
-Measure, measure, measure and then drill

My boat is pretty cheaply made so I'm assuming I'll need some backing on the fiberglass. How do I do that? Will a plate of some sort just under the fiberglass be good enough? Do I need to fiberglass the backing in? I've never worked with fiberglass before but I'm willing to learn if I need to.

How do I get the padded vinyl off the sides of the boat so I can get at the fiberglass underneath. I can feel some bolts sticking through on the inside. Do I just unscrew those and hope for the best? Is it the sort of thing that's really dependent on the boat?

to get the padded vinyl off just unscrew those screws you were talking about and it'll pull off. at least thats how its been on all the boats i've seen. for the backing plates we got fiberglass plates from the our local fiberglass repair shop. you don't need to glass then in. i've seen some people glass them into the boat but i haven't seen any difference.