Bought my 1st ever PWC

[soupdragon]

Hi all

What a great forum. I've spent some time here prior to actually buying and I've just purchased a 2000 GTI with the 717 single carb Rotax. I like what you guys said about this engine and as a newbie, it'll be plenty powerful

A quick summary of my buying experience.

I wanted something cheap to cut my teeth in PWC and if it all goes wrong, I can sell it for parts, right?

Let's hope it doesn't come to that though!

I paid the equivalent of $2000 for it (I'm in Ireland) and while it was in fairly good condition, there was water and oil in the bilge. Hmmnnn....alarm bells. It ran sweet on the hose though so I said look, if it passes a water test, I'll give you $2k for it (he was looking a fair chunk more)

It took off like a rocket, straight out of the hole in like 2 seconds and away right up to full speed. Handled well and no concerning noises and idled lovely when back at the ramp. All good.

So I bought it, took it home and flushed the salt water out and got to work cleaning it. The engine bay has been cleaned up and bilge now clear of water and oil plus a lot of general dirt and grime.

The oil in the bilge is still a bit of an alarm bell, which is why I wanted the engine bay cleaned up. I'm figuring that with a clean engine bay, it'll be easier to spot problems.

Couple of pics:



So the outside is in fairly good shape. I really like those wing mirrors!

I've cleaned the engine area too so I guess, my best next step is to run it on the hose and see if any more oil appears from anywhere? And if there is no oil spill, I'm good, right?

My plan was to take it for a service after purchase but I can't get it done until winter due to demand. So I'm out of luck with a professional look over and I'm down to my own ham fisted skills and knowledge which on a scale of 1 to 10, is about 2. I did have a 90hp 2 stroke Bayliner bowrider a while back but it never gave bother and it had the oil bypass.

This GTI has the oil feed still in place which I do like the idea of, but I know it can break engines if it doesn't work.

So any general tips about anything to watch out for so I don't break it!?

Anyways, I hope you like my ski and look forward to chatting with you all on the forums

 

[burtshaver2021]

Congratulations on your ski!!! It looks to be in amazing shape. In my opinion the 717 is about the best seadoo engine BRP ever made. No worries with rave valves or counter balance shafts, just a good solid engine. In my opinion because the machine has ran strong for you with no issues except the oil leak I would not bother taking it to a professional ( so called professional). The oil leak is most likely coming from either the Sean in your oil tank if your tank has a seam? Or from the rubber grommet on the bottom of the oil tank. Both rather easy fixes. I would recommend you get a shop manual and read through it. Also you can ask questions on here, which would be more beneficial to you than trusting it with a stranger, lol. On all my non RFI machines I mix the fuel in the tank at 100:1 in addition to the injection oil, it’s not needed but I’ve always felt it adds a little more lubrication and I have never even fouled a plug. The only reason to ever run it on the hose is to back flush the cooling system and when you do run it on the hose don’t run it for more than 1 minute and always remember you never want the water on without the engine running. Engine on, water on, water off, engine off. Other than that if your ever doing any maintenance or work on it, just make sure that it’s getting oil, injection oil is life blood for them, without oil they die, even for a minute. Again, awesome looking seadoo.

 

[soupdragon]

Thank you and that's great insight, will take it on board. Really good shout about the 100:1 mix as a back up too. Won't do any harm and could save me in the long run.

 

[burtshaver2021]

Just remembered also, it’s important to run the correct injection oil in them for a long healthy life. It will say in the manual whether it requires full synthetic or synthetic blend but it should be TC-API low ash oil such as BRP’s own brand XPS or Lucas makes one that fits the bill also in a blue labelled jug. Don’t run any oil that is rated TCW-3 even if it has the TC-API rating as well. Usually a good idea to drain all the old oil in the tank and put in a new oil filter before switching to your new oil if it’s not already running the proper oil? the XPS is red in colour and is the only one I know of that is red. If you do drain your oil and put a new filter make sure to get all the air out of the oil filter and lines, then bleed the oil pump. The main reason for getting rid of the old oil first is that some oils will coagulate when mixed. If you don’t feel like going through that trouble, you should at least take some of your old oil out of the tank and mix it with the new oil, let it sit for a day to see if any chunking forms, if not your probably good to just run the old oil to about a 1/4 tank and fill up with the proper oil.

 

[soupdragon]

I think the guy said it's always been run on yamalube but that's supposed to be blue, and it looks more like red/brown although would need to syringe some out and check.

Is yamalube not the best spec then?

 

[burtshaver2021]

Pretty sure Yamaha was one of the first if not the first to recommend the TCW-3 oil, I did a quick search and the Yamalube 2M is supposed to be blue, No I wouldn’t use Yamahalube as I believe it would have the TCW-3 rating. The brownish red leads me to believe he was running the proper XPS oil. I got to say again that your machine looks like it’s in super good shape. Did you get it from the original owner? Cause it looks like someone took care of it, not much fading off the plastics. And good price too, I see people asking upwards of 4500.00 here in Ontario Canada for similar machines.

 

[soupdragon]

Pretty sure Yamaha was one of the first if not the first to recommend the TCW-3 oil, I did a quick search and the Yamalube 2M is supposed to be blue, No I wouldn’t use Yamahalube as I believe it would have the TCW-3 rating. The brownish red leads me to believe he was running the proper XPS oil. I got to say again that your machine looks like it’s in super good shape. Did you get it from the original owner? Cause it looks like someone took care of it, not much fading off the plastics. And good price too, I see people asking upwards of 4500.00 here in Ontario Canada for similar machines.

The chap that sold it only had it a year, bought as a 2nd ski for his son but was only used a couple of times, so he's going back to just one ski for himself.

The advert said that it had a jet rebuilt and when I viewed, he said the previous owner, a friend, looked after it.

Yes, it seems like a typical BS story, only used it a couple of times, bought it from a friend yada yada...but he seemed genuine and didn't hesitate around a water test.

He was pretty confident in the machine as he was straight to the sea when I suggested a water test and he even didn't bother with a life jacket either!

After I bought it, I phoned to book a service the next day and got chatting to the owner. Turns out that he was the one who rebuilt the jet assembly at a cost of $500 so the sellers story stacked up.

It was quite dirty though, but just superficial dirt. It looked a little tired but I could see in behind the dirt was a solid ski. Primarily, the purchase priority for me was mechanically sound 1st, cosmetics 2nd.

It didn't take too much work to get her back to her best.

I used a great degreaser in the engine bay:



You can see the before and after example here




And engine bay





It was a great price for sure. Despite the low price tag, I'll look after it like my pride and joy. I love the idea of keeping older equipment running and looked after for many years.

Over here in Ireland, you still see the occasional Ford Sierra, Cortinas, Granada's running about and I would give an invisible nod to the driver when they go past as you know the vast majority of those cars have been turned into canned tins of soup long ago.

I'll be doing everything in my power to ensure I don't wreck this ski and I'll try to have it run like the day it left the factory. I like that challenge

You might even notice the 2013 Nissan Leaf in one of my earlier pics. 100k miles on it and not good range, but there's loads of life left in it for shorter trips so I can still use a machine that not too many other people would want to use.

Bought for $3.5k and will be a great low cost car to run. I've got a gas car too, absolutely required for towing, but much cheaper to drive electric for short journeys. It's 10 years old, 140k miles and absolutely on the button. Just maintain the machine and if it's well put together, it'll last

 

[burtshaver2021]

I couldn’t agree more with you, If you paid 25,000.00 for a new machine, it would only be new till the warranty was up and they break too. By the way you can get free manual and parts catalogue for your seadoo at seadoomanuals.net

 

[mikidymac]

Yamalube is blue and is the wrong oil.

If it is red or golden it is more than likely the correct Seadoo oil as I haven’t seen others that color.
717/720 is probably the most reliable engine Seadoo ever made and can take any API-TC rated oil, mineral, semi synthetic or full synthetic is fine.