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RESTO 97 spx resto thread.

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Jetskigoodies

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Tonight we picked up a 97 spx. The body is in great shape. The owner said that it has a bad starter. I know I know thats what they all say, I did talk to him and he said it will crank with the plugs out but not with them in. So we go and look at it, we pulled the head and you can see the cross hatches in the cylinders and the pistons look newer and bored .25 over. We spin the pto and everything moves as it should with no unusual noises.

Here is what she looked like when we got there.

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Very clean, most of the decals look great, the seat needs to be rewrapped, the handlebar pad has the usual mold.

Now for the motor. There was dark black oil all over the motor and exhaust. We popped the raves off and both bellows were blown out and one cap looked melted. It looks as though the oil we saw sprayed from the raves.

So it does have the grey tempo lines.

We pulled the starter and a bunch of rusty water flowed out. So we pulled the stator cover to see the damage and......

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Holy moly that is the worst one I have seen.

We ended up stopping there for the night. Tomorrow the motor will be pulled and the cleaning will begin.

Plans so far is a hump seat either wrapped in yellow with a black stencil, or black seat with yellow stencil.

Hood: either a stock 95 xp800 yellow single gauge hood or a painted gloss black single gauge hood.

Handlebar Pad: my modded pad in stock yellow from a gsx or painted gloss black.

Mats: hydroturf only!!!!! Black tip is junk and just peels up. So either 2-toned black on yellow or just plain black.

I think I am keeping the decals at this point.
 
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How much are you looking to get for this one? After my 96 XP the fiancé now says she needs one. :) which is fine by me!
I think I saw that one for sale around here... You pick them up quick. I can't ever get to the cheap ones before they are gone.
 
I will keep watching and wait to find out. Looking for another 787 x4, not picky about the year. Went through all your other restore threads, you guys do great work! Love to see them fixed up rather than parted out!
 
We got alot done today. No cosmetic stuff though.

Here are some before pics.

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Motor pulled and all the nastyness is reveiled.
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The bottom of the hull is in excellent shape

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The cylinders look good to me

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We pulled the motor completely apart, and everything looked good except the front bearing, it looks like the mag seal failed and the front bearing has some chatter and rust. We had a good crank so we put that in and completely reassembled the motor. We replaced the mag,stator,flywheel, starter and stator housing.

We cleaned everything inside the hull and put it back togethor.


The head pipe had the welch plug problem and the po used jb weld and that failed. So we replaced that with a pipe we already had welded.


The motor was not even close to aligned.

The vts works but has a little bit of conversion.

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Rave valves before

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This has been put on the back burner, i have been trying to get my 96 xp back togethor. My fiance drives the xp and since she has seen all the previous motors painted, she wanted hers painted hot pink...... So I looked for hot pink engine enamel and they have it. Vht makes it but was on back order and the quickest we could get it was one week. So I took her to the auto parts store and this is what we came up with.

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It is an anodized finish, purple. The starter, head pipe, tuned pipe, manifold, and engine mount bracket is silver. It was not my choice but I am sure glad the hot pink was on back order.
 
It took forever to paint this. 2 coats of primer, then to acheive the anodized effect you need to put down a base coat of metal cast, which was 3 coats, then 4 coats of the purple and 3-4 coats of clear.
 
Wow that's alot of effort for a motor, I think it looks great. The silver breaks it up just enough.
I am sure she is worth it.
 
Subscribed!!! That purple is awesome!!! I'm thinking I might pull engine on my xp and paint it purple. Hey goodies maybe on the spx you can paint engine YELLOW. oh yeah!!! That would look sick!
 
More work was done on the 96 xp.

We painted the manifold and the rave housings.

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Everything but the carbs and flame arrestor has been installed. So tomorrow everything should be done.
 
That is looking good! Always loved that hull with the 787 and and always appreciated the SPX model. Nice work!

By the way, I have seen a ton of Mag covers like that on engines that were fine. It seems to me that water comes in through the starter (in the ones I have seen) and then just goes nuts in there.

My GSXL was like that, but dry. It was causing all sorts of electrical problems and performance too.

love seeing the restores.
 
I should have just started a new thread for my 96 xp, instead it has had the things we have done to it sprinkled throughout our resto threads, but here it is again, in these pictures all that was left was hooking up the carbs and a few other odds and ends.

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This weekend the motor is going back in, I think we are going to put a black single gauge hood and our handlebar pad mod on it as well. Once the motor is in things should go fast. I want to put it up for sale by the begining of April. At that point we will have a 97 spx, 97 xp, 99 spx, a 94 spx and a 96 gsx for sale.
 
No we have another 99 spx right now too. I kind of want to keep it but I find myself saying that about every seadoo we get.
 
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