Are those stripes gel coat?  They look like paint to me.  If they're paint, they may not be easily salvageable, at least not like new.  Nice looking project though.

Here's an alternative to a box anchor.  I use one of these and I only boat on the lower river, anchoring in the current.  This holds great, doesn't drag up all the mud like a box anchor, doesn't require any chain, and is around 1/2 price of a box. I got mine from Overton's because they had a free shipping promo and I bought a couple other things at the same time, but Amazon has these for like $75.00.

http://www.diggeranchor.com/

I was just at KH metals Sat.  The have complete hubs with bearings and seals for 35.00 a piece.  They are with  press in studs, which I prefer.

There should be a # on the cable housing.  If you don't find it, just measure the over all length and you can get a replacement cable from any of the boat parts suppliers.  Steering cable for a rack and pinion on a jet is pretty standard stuff.

I like your boat!  I have a 76 Sleek Craft that looks to be from the same mold that I am restoring (slowly).  If your biggest problem is a flat cam, you could feasibly pull the motor down, clean all the metal out that the bad cam left behind, then just do rings, bearings and a valve job.  Your back on the water in a couple weekends.  If you want 400-500 hp, I think you'll need to do a complete motor build with a good plan to start.  A pump gas 450 hp motor is very doable, but you're going to need good parts for it to live ie; a decent set of heads that can flow a little, decent valve train with preferably a Hyd roller cam, decent pistons (not stock cast), a cast crank is fine as long as it's no smaller than 10-10 and I would Tufftride it for added peace of mind.  A good balance job, and I would go at least 750 cfm on the carb.  Get with a good machine shop that knows marine engines, this is probably the most important part of the build, even if you do your own assembly.  A good machinist will help pick out the parts, piston size, cam, etc, that will match your motor so everything is working efficiently together.  This is just my opinion, so take for what ever it's worth.

i dont know about kids but, my 50 some thing year old wife will be strapping her ski's on this weekend at big river for the 3rd  time in her life. she is trying damn hard to learn how to ski.....

That's awesome, good for her.

And I'm out, didn't think my brothers fiancé was dumb enough to plan there wedding on Father's Day but after checking the dates she has once again proved me wrong.

You just realized your brothers getting married this Saturday?  LOL.  I take it you guy's are super close.

I talked with Jake today about trailering up together.  There should be 6-7 boats coming up from the southern camps on Sat morning.  We should be there 11:00 or so Sat morning.

Hope this won't be the kiss of death for your bearings.  With 120,000 miles of wear on the pinion bearings, I probably would have thought long and hard before I had someone mess with the pre-load. I've seen a bunch of pinion bearing failures after a pinion seal was replaced, especially on newer Dana's.  Not always though, so maybe you should burn some incense, do a couple shots of Fireball,  or sacrifice a bucket of KFC in honor of the bearing God's just to be safe!

 My idea would be a basic white with HOC candy tangerine (love this color) on a silver base.  Use silver/titanium, black and maybe a purple or bright lime green, all in metallic, as accent  stripes.  I want to do a day cruiser I'm building in similar colors, but wife doesn't like any orange.  As far as rub rail vs cap, I like the look of a cap but if your mom and sister are like most of us and don't drive it like a show piece, I'd do a rub rail.  Custom paint jobs are normally a bitch to repair and look like shit if the are all chipped up.

Here is a couple of the boat..

That second video is nice, she's a beauty, all dialed in and ready to go!!    And you got a nice boat too!

The threads pulled from the bowl. A few people have come to the same conclusion that the bolts were to short. The bolts I used were all brand new 1 1/2" stainless. The depth of the hole in the bowl is barely 1" deep.  I used the longest bolt I could get in there.   About half the bolts were still in the housing when we got it on the trailer. You can still see the blue lock-tite on the threads.  I think the threads were a little too degraded in the used bowl.  In hind sight, 2 bolts didn't feel great when I did my final torque.  I told myself the next time I pull this bowl off I'm going to install SS inserts to all the holes.  Well that time just got here a lot sooner than I had anticipated.  I think I underestimated the force generated when you up the horse power significantly.  I also put in a B1 racing loader, feeding a bronze A impeller.  Nothing crazy, but everything was tight in this pump.  I'm going to talk with Chris at B1 and see what he thinks about drilling and double bolting the bowl.  I asked on PB back when I was building the pump and was told this was not necessary unless you were pushing 1000 hp or more.  I'm guessing I'm in the 750 hp neighborhood, I didn't get to dyno the motor like I wanted to, yet!   I'm just glad I still have all my parts, that's a fare chunk of change hanging on those cables.

I'm planning on getting my boat wet for the first time Saturday at Elsinore.  If all goes according to plan and I have no major problems, we'll be leaving Friday afternoon.  Man, I am SO looking forward to a weekend to relax and enjoy boats instead of work on them.  Keep your fingers crossed, see everyone  friday night/ sat morning. Greg