300/440/550 My 550 Build

Ross12321

Ross12321

Location
Norfolk VA
I have had this 550 since as long as I could remember. My father has old pictures of me just at 6 months old out on the water putting around with him on this ski. The ski is a 1984 JS550, bone stock with great compression when I received it almost 2 years ago. I was out riding the rivers when a cooling line came off, I fried the engine. The ski had a lot of broken fiberglass that needed repaired and the old single ring was long over due for a refresh, in my opinion.

This is my first time playing with fiberglass, marine paint, and contact cement. Overall the build took longer than expected, but I am pleased with the results. I have attached pictures of each step as I went through the build. Enjoy!
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This is how she looked just after she was blown up and the padding was removed (note the damaged hood)
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Everything looked to be in pretty great shape
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Had a little bit of build up, but hey, that is looking good for being over 30 years old!
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While the engine was at the machine shop I tackled the broken fibers in the hood
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All fixed and fairing material applied. I threw out that HVLP gun after a few failed attempts spraying Interlux primer and topside through it.
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You can see I tried to get another sized gun, should've started with a siphon pot to begin with!
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The hull was sanded down and repairs were made around the nose. I loaded up the glass on the back side rather than opt for those metal braces. I wanted a strong clean look.
 

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Ross12321

Ross12321

Location
Norfolk VA
I forgot to post the pic of the new double rings in the first post, but you can pull up the pic. At this point I had already bought a new home, got a dog, and there were a lot of changes going on in life. This is why is took me almost two years to complete the build.
Here is some more progress
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See how great the coverage is with the interlux primer! Thank god for siphon pot!
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Primer laid! looking sharp! forgot to get a final pic after the bright side was sprayed.
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Top of the ski done in primer.
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The result of spraying Brightside!
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This is the handy work of my kickass wife! No way I could have gotten them to lay that good! Thank you Decal 101 on Ebay! They are kickass to work with and the can put your numbers in the graphic if need be. They are a really good group of people to work with.
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Got all the turf laid. That whole process took just over 2 weeks of setting small areas to make sure it wasn't going anywhere! A pro could have done it faster, but oh well.
BTW notice that fancy trailer that I got from a neighbor who donated it to this project. He was just as excited as me to get this thing done!!!
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I got this far and thought I was going to buy a welder and make my own pole. Nope! so i had to backtrack and finish up the old pole.
 
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Ross12321

Ross12321

Location
Norfolk VA
Here is my final result. ready to hit the water after some fine tuning next spring.
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Thank you for reading about my build. I tried to keep it down to pictures since that is all I look at around the forums anyway. Please let me know what you think and if you have any questions hit the reply!
 
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