We need to expound on this a bit so others can avoid any issues in the future, as for the hardware store,There are several parts that were lost that are not available at the hardware store, the 5/8 od by 8mm id by .250 thick stainless standoff for the base is custom made for me, also he needed the flat bearing that he would never find and as he mentioned the factory 12mm stand off that the nozzle pivots on. There is an incredible amount of force from the jet pump being directed by this nozzle and all of it is being held in place by the factory parts 2- 8mm bolts shielded by 2 small 12mm collars , all the force is placed on those collars and there is NO bushing between the nozzle and the bolt collar, everything relies on those bolts staying in place, if just one comes loose the force will turn the loose bolt each time you turn the nozzle and it will pretty quickly fall out especially if it is the bottom one . So steering or not if you ever remove your nozzles you need to secure the bolts with thread locking compound , the factory certainly does.
After talking with him I honestly think the best advice I can give him is to go buy some lottery tickets because he is one lucky person.
This is what could have happened, he noticed his steering acting strange last time he was out, he put it off to possible weeds, now we know it was not weeds, he was unknowingly driving around with just the top bolts holding his nozzles to the pumps, this along with the ultimate steering system and the fangs all connected with just one bolt. And it all held together, he was lucky because he had the fangs holding the side force stabilizer on to the nozzle otherwise those would have fallen off, and he would have needed new parts there, he was lucky because if he had placed the controls in reverse with just one bolt holding the nozzles on, the extra force on the closed reverse gates would have broken the nozzles clean off his pumps.
Rather than spending a few dollars for hardware he would be buying new nozzles and new side force stabilizers, so he needs to take some of the money he saved and get some lottery tickets! Now you know why I harp on the thread locking compound in my instructions and if you just look inside the nozzles after your first few runs with the new steering you can see the end of the bottom bolt in the inner nozzle and therefore you can see if it is working loose as the end of the bolt will not be visible anymore. So I am amazed that nothing bad happened and glad for him that he did not try to rig it back together with the wrong parts to use the boat today because it would certainly not have ended well.