Bogging, now no start

[garrett.lyall]

Hello All,

I’m new to PWC and just bought a 1995 Seadoo SPX. The seller made no claims about it working or not ($500). We had it running on the trailer with a new battery and all seemed to be good. Put it in the lake today and it wouldn’t go much above and idle without bogging. I had new plugs anyway so I put them in and started running a carb cleaner through it. It started picking up a little more speed bit by bit until I was able to get two good bursts of speed out of it. After the second it started bogging again and developed a knocking sound and then quit. I now have nothing. The starter won’t engage, it won’t turn over and it seems to be pooched. Any ideas?

Thank you

 

[GGuillot]

Hello All,

I’m new to PWC and just bought a 1995 Seadoo SPX. The seller made no claims about it working or not ($500). We had it running on the trailer with a new battery and all seemed to be good. Put it in the lake today and it wouldn’t go much above and idle without bogging. I had new plugs anyway so I put them in and started running a carb cleaner through it. It started picking up a little more speed bit by bit until I was able to get two good bursts of speed out of it. After the second it started bogging again and developed a knocking sound and then quit. I now have nothing. The starter won’t engage, it won’t turn over and it seems to be pooched. Any ideas?

Thank you

Sounds like it was starving for fuel, but you kept pushing it and now you likely destroyed the top end. Since you can't get it to turn over to do a compression check, which may be pointless, pull the head off and look down in the cylinders. Anticipate it needs a top end rebuild, but you won't know for sure until you dig deeper.

Let's say you get the top end done compression cks good, etc, then BEFORE you take it out again after fixing that, you need to go through the fuel system completely, new lines, new fuel selector, oring in the fuel strainer, pull the carbs off and clean and rebuild with an oem kit.

I hate to say this, but what you did could have been avoided, the worst thing to do after buying these old skis that sat is gas up and hit the lake. Aside from sellers lying when they say it "ran fine last season, but I dunno" there's a list of things you should do anyway, like what mention above, plus, flush the jet pump and fill with fresh oil and change the oil injector lines. The list could be long, I took a full year rebuilding on each of my skis before they saw water, I'm just talking about the minimum to address.

BTW - don't run carb cleaner through it, it destroys the rubber stuff inside, only use when you got the carbs off and stripped down to the bare metal components.

 

[garrett.lyall]

Sounds like it was starving for fuel, but you kept pushing it and now you likely destroyed the top end. Since you can't get it to turn over to do a compression check, which may be pointless, pull the head off and look down in the cylinders. Anticipate it needs a top end rebuild, but you won't know for sure until you dig deeper.

Let's say you get the top end done compression cks good, etc, then BEFORE you take it out again after fixing that, you need to go through the fuel system completely, new lines, new fuel selector, oring in the fuel strainer, pull the carbs off and clean and rebuild with an oem kit.

I hate to say this, but what you did could have been avoided, the worst thing to do after buying these old skis that sat is gas up and hit the lake. Aside from sellers lying when they say it "ran fine last season, but I dunno" there's a list of things you should do anyway, like what mention above, plus, flush the jet pump and fill with fresh oil and change the oil injector lines. The list could be long, I took a full year rebuilding on each of my skis before they saw water, I'm just talking about the minimum to address.

BTW - don't run carb cleaner through it, it destroys the rubber stuff inside, only use when you got the carbs off and stripped down to the bare metal components.

Thanks for the reply.

It was the battery and I suspect something electrical in the ignition. A quick charge and a little playing with the button and it’s running as it was this morning.

Thanks for the advice. I assumed it was fuel related and it would need to be gone through. It was in the previous owners lake this summer so it hasn’t been sitting for years. He did say it probably needed a “tune up”. Compression on both cylinders are still the same now as they were before going into the lake, 150psi, so my next step will be to go through the fuel system.

Thank you

 

[GGuillot]

It was the battery and I suspect something electrical in the ignition. A quick charge and a little playing with the button and it’s running as it was this morning.

Put a volt meter on the battery with it running at idle on the trailer, verify it's getting a charge. Should see over 13 volts.

 

[mikidymac]

Don’t ride it again without full fuel system service and carb rebuild. Only buy Genuine Mikuni parts.