1998 Speedster Questions

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lithium2g

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I honestly try to avoid making these "i need help" threads. 2nd one in a week because im so bad at this.

New owner of a Seadoo speedster 1998. Boat was previously neglected for 18 months sitting in the elements. I come along and bought it cheap because I was confident in the local service department fixing stuff. Spent $1200usd getting a variety of important things replaced/fixed/realigned - all of which is outside of my skill set. The seadoo service centre will no longer touch this boat because the cost/effort to fix it is not worth it for them. Fair enough, but sucks for me. These boats were not commercially sold here in Australia and there is only a handful of them imported. Im hoping to get 4-6 years out of this boat

I have 2 concerns:

The fuel gauge does not work and so the fuel pump light flashes non stop despite being full.
And the boat is suppose to beep at me for different things such as overheating, not in neurtal when trying to start etc. This does not happen at all. No beeps at any time.
All other electrical functions appear to be working. I dont know if this is a problem but I would like to know if my engine is overheating - 8 beeps right? Any trouble shooting I can do?

Since being serviced, the boat has been on water twice for a total of 40 mins. It is awesome. I didn't really encounter any significant issues while out. But when I come back home to flush the engines, i noticed a fair bit of water coming out of the exhausts. Is this normal? Both the exhaust gaskets were sikaflexd because they had deteriorated badly.
Could there be water getting in somewhere it shouldnt? In addition, after 20 minutes running on the water, i chekced the engine bay and there was a small amount of water in the bottom. Not sure if it is normal. It didn't appear to effect anything.


Thanks for reading my ramblings.
 
The fuel gauge does not work and so the fuel pump light flashes non stop despite being full.
And the boat is suppose to beep at me for different things such as overheating, not in neurtal when trying to start etc. This does not happen at all. No beeps at any time.
All other electrical functions appear to be working. I dont know if this is a problem but I would like to know if my engine is overheating - 8 beeps right? Any trouble shooting I can do?

I have a 1996 Challenger, and can offer a few observations, based on my experience.

I just replaced my OEM non-beeping beeper, with a cheap generic Amazon offering--rated
12-30 VDC. Easy process; unplugged original and spliced on the replacement. The beepers
are polarized; if wiring coloring doesn't give a sense of polarity, just twist wires together and
test either way. One way will beep, the other won't.

On the fuel gauge, check easy stuff first. Eyeball plugs/connectors on gauge assy, and at fuel
tank. I'd reckon the next step would be checking the send unit in the fuel tank, itself...
 
You can remove the fuel baffle easily on these boats. PAY ATTENTION to the lines. They are marked on the baffle though. Once out you can remove the bottom of the baffle with a small screwdriver, it just clips on. More than likely the magnets fell off the float or the F1 fuse blew. You can buy a new style replacement fuel float, part# 295500438 With a full tank of gas the Ohm's on the fuel baffle connector (pink and pink/black tracer) should be right close to 0 to 0.5 ohms. And empty tank should be around 85-95 ohms. So before you would actually pull the baffle you could check that with a digital volt meter. If the gauge is reading empty and you know it's full your ohm reading would be 85-95 ohms. If you don't get a change in resistance IE: your meter stays on OL the F1 fuse is blown and can be fixed, but it envolves a little cutting into the fuel baffle and some soldering.


Here's some video I found real quick
 
I have a sea doo 2002 Challenger 2000, first of all what kind of engine do you have? Rotax or mercury? If mercury 240 EFI M2 then we have the same engine. As far as I know, the water in the engine bay is normal because of the siphon break that you can see there, sometimes water just comes back to the bottom since there is no valve on that break, the purpose of the siphon break is to create a vacuum in the engine bay when the engine is running and when the engine stops water just go right in to the little amount. Dr. Honda knows better about Mercury engine. Because of this forum, I did work on my boat myself, mechanic can't run it because of obselete parts and I did buy it online and change the everything to the near OEM brand.
 
I have a sea doo 2002 Challenger 2000, first of all what kind of engine do you have? Rotax or mercury? If mercury 240 EFI M2 then we have the same engine. As far as I know, the water in the engine bay is normal because of the siphon break that you can see there, sometimes water just comes back to the bottom since there is no valve on that break, the purpose of the siphon break is to create a vacuum in the engine bay when the engine is running and when the engine stops water just go right in to the little amount. Dr. Honda knows better about Mercury engine. Because of this forum, I did work on my boat myself, mechanic can't run it because of obselete parts and I did buy it online and change the everything to the near OEM brand.

1998-1999 were the last years of rotax 787 2. Stroke engines with that body style. I have a small amount in my engine bay (99 speedster) which appears to be normal for me. Is your bilge automatic?
 
1998-1999 were the last years of rotax 787 2. Stroke engines with that body style. I have a small amount in my engine bay (99 speedster) which appears to be normal for me. Is your bilge automatic?
Yes it is automatic bilge pump... i had my drain plug open last September launch luckily bilge work well... luckily my engine was not flooded my dad realize it after 15 mins when bilge turn on by itself... i always had little water in the engine bay everytime i launch....
 
Thanks for the responses guys, I appreciate. They have all been helpful.

Yes it is automatic bilge pump... i had my drain plug open last September launch luckily bilge work well... luckily my engine was not flooded my dad realize it after 15 mins when bilge turn on by itself... i always had little water in the engine bay every time i launch....

The bilge pump is working in the sense that I can hear it operating when I turn it on. After 4 hours use in the water there is typically an inch of water inside the engine area. Upon retriving the boat and opening the bung at the back, the whole lot drains out. So I am not sure if:

1) There is insufficient water in the bilge to require the bilge pump functioning.
Or
2) The bilge output path is blocked and im just lucky im only spending 4 hours in the water at a time.

Recently for testing purposes, I ran some tap water into the engine bay directing it to where the bilge pump sits and all of the water (around 20litres) filled up in the middle section of the boat where it sat until I put the boat trailer on an angle with my drive way. I had the bigle pump on at different times, but I couldn't see any water coming out except for the bung draining the water by gravity. I dont even know where the bloody bilge pump output is suppose to be

Tomorrow I will take a video demonstrating my concerns. There are no videos on youtube demonstrating a bilge pump working on a 787 speedster so I dont know what Im looking at.



You can remove the fuel baffle easily on these boats.

I looked into this and found this video
which had a bit more info on this. While I am confident in identifying and fixing the problem as shown in the video, I am not yet not confident in removing it from the fuel tank but hopefully soon I will. until then Im just checking the fuel tank each time.

Lastly, I discovered the seadoo alert beeper was disconnected from behind the panel. When i plugged it back in it beeped nonstop indicating overheating but I dont think it is and remain hopeful the temp reads are simply inaccurate. It has since returned to being disconnected.


Thanks lads
 
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