Challenger 4tec Upgrade

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I finally got around to installing my depth finder. I put it right behind the steering wheel, where the fuel gauge used to be. I figure depth is the most important thing to know. This forced me to move the vts gauge over by the cup holder.
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It reads pretty well until I'm going fast. I believe the transducer just needs to be lowered some more. I think it comes out of the water.
I also tried to widen my steering nozzle, but for whatever reason, doing this nozzle killed my hone stones really quickly. They lost their shape in the middle where she nozzle started to get narrow. I only managed to widen it to 87mm, making it only 3mm wider than the reduction nozzle. This did make anoticeable difference, but there is still a lot of water being reflected out of the steering nozzle.
Regardless, we had the boat out all weekend pulling tubes, wake boards and jumping waves. Good times :)
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Thanks man. Most people just call me crazy for spending all this effort on a boat. It's worth it to me though. This thing is a blast!
 
You are crazy for it, but nobody else has a boat just like YOURS, and they probably wont unless copy YOUR boat. Then they will owe you royaltys
 
Ha, that would be the day :) I don't think they could pay me royalties as I don't have a patent, and I'm pretty sure Seadoo forum is in the public domain, but I like the thought :) honestly if I had to do it over again, I would have found a 2001 Speedster SC. It already has the 155 mill pump and it's probably a direct drop in. Not sure about the fuel tank. That is probably going to be the hurdle for anybody trying to copy this, as I was lucky enough to have a lot of welding equipment at my disposal.
 
[MENTION=83161]beerdart[/MENTION] , have you ever hung off the back of your boat to see what the pump is doing? Even though my steering nozzle is bored to 3mm larger than my reduction, I still get water shooting back out of it. Does your speedster not do the same thing?

Also, do those speedsters have trim control? Mine originally came with it and I upgraded it to an electronic trim setup. Makes a diff. on the water, but also increases the amount of water reflected out of the steering nozzle.

Anyone know a way to bore a steering nozzle w/o going to a machine shop? I killed my $7 set of hone stones and only gained 1mm. I'd like to go another 1-3mm to see how it changes things. I feel like this steering nozzle is losing me some holeshot.
 
Yea, but I'm not sure if I'll want to go wider. This is a trial/ error process. Going to try something here once i fix my drill. Almost caught my makita on fire last time i used it. The trigger switch shit the bed on me when i was boring the steering nozzle
 
Haha no I have not hung off the back of my boat your welcome to. No trim. I can bore your nozzle if you send it to me.
 
I would love to hang off the back and see :) i tried to on my buddy's big speedster with twin 155s but there was too much water splashing to see. I'm gonna try my idea first and if i can't get it to work, i might take you up on it [MENTION=83161]beerdart[/MENTION] . I bet the refraction occurs because of the changing nozzle angles. I wonder how the rxp copes with this (if it even does). I doubt anyone has hung off the back and stuck their head down there to look lol.
 
Well, I haven't made any progress with the nozzle boring, but I did have a chance to investigate limiting winterization practices. Before, I was like all the other scared boaters, flooding the entire cooling system with antifreeze. Then an extreme bout of laziness overtook me in Dec. I just couldn't bring myself to do that whole antifreeze thing before it got really cold. What really stopped me was having to go out of town for a week when the temps at night dipped down into the teens for a few days. Now I didn't just leave the boat the way I ride it. I did take off the strainer bowl and drive 30 miles with it off. The only place that water can be trapped in my cooling system is in the water-water heat exchanger, which is just in front of the strainer. Having it disassembled, all the water ran safely out of the heat exchanger as I drove. After each ride, I blow all the water out of the exhaust system by revving it on the trailer a few times, so there was nothing there to freeze up. I must admit, I was a bit nervous, fearing that maybe some water got left behind somewhere, maybe the heat exchanger didn't drain properly. But I took it out yesterday for a full 5 hours, and it ran perfectly. We had a blast, bundled up in our ski gear, and being the only non-fishermen on the water. I have this mental condition where I must be on the water at least once every 2 weeks or so. Otherwise, I get all antsy and irritable. Luckily, my boat design worked out to where that can still be easily done, even in the winters :)
 
Ya, i had to take a boat therapy day this week. Couldn't sit in the office while it's 70 out and i haven't been on the lake in over a month. Making it up by coming in an hour early and working lunch :)
 
We install these drain cocks on Mercruisers quite often, mine has all the drains plumbed together in a single location using 1/4 tubing, my version of Mercury's single-drain system.

I prefer using multiple drain cocks though and intend to convert mine back, this way I can confirm water has actually drained from each location (detect sand clogging).
 

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My idea for improving my method for boring the nozzles seems to be working. The issue was that I was using coarse hone stones, which were wearing in the middle and not giving me a straight cut. So I used pliers and pulled all the stone off the metal base. I then cut strips of good quality 80 grit sandpaper and generously hot glued them on. Replacement strips I just glued on top of the old ones.
After more honing, I quickly widened it by another 1.5 or so mm. Now my steering nozzle is at 88mm while reduction is at 84. The results were not as good I had hoped, but we're noteworthy. The boat seems to turn shaper now, but reverse control seems worse. Most importantly, I'm still seeing a lot of water shooting out of the steering nozzle and spaying all over the transom. I'm really not sure what to do about this except keep widening. Cavitation is still pretty bad from stand still.

If anyone out there can give me pump specs from a 4tec speedster, it would really help me get a good baseline. My impeller is stock gtx 11/19 I believe. The nozzles were from an rxpx, since I needed something with trim.
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So why not have a machine shop bore out the nozzles to give you a true round hole to start with and hone from there?
 
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