needsmorecoffee
New Member
I have no experience or knowledge with PWC's but I restore and maintain several old cars, grew up in the auto repair industry and hold several patents. I also roadraced two stroke motorcycles in the 70's and had three sons who raced motocross and I did all reair and mods on their 2 stroke race bikes. A friend had a Sea Doo that had not been out of his garage since 1998. I bought it sight unseen and towed it to my workshop. I discovered that I had purchased a 1994 Sea Doo SPX with a 657 CC Rotax engine. It was not seized and after oiling down the cylinders and installing a new battery, it had 142 & 145 lbs of compression. Drained all old gas and oil, replaced fuel lines and found that I still could not get fuel to the carbs. Fuel selector switch will flow in run or reserve, will flow fuel when shut off. Changed spark plugs and engine fired off and ran very well. Did not know how to cool engine or if any thing else needed cooling when on the trailer out of water. Decided to be daring and loaded up Grandma and myself in our 30 year old truck and headed to the lake. Launched from a State Park that had no other customers at the boat launch. As we had a 2 person ski, we thought that we could both get on and slowly cruise around the cove. Wrong! it instantly flips over when Grandma gets on the back. We flipped it 4 more times trying to get both of us on. We were both thankful that there was no one to watch our obvious lack of experience, and total lack of balance and athletic ability, not to mention how bad we both look in swimsuits. I finally discovered that if the instant Grandma gets on the back, if I get the Sea Doo moving it is stable enough to stay on! Had a lot of fun riding it and enjoyed myself a great deal. As I have never been on a PWC before, I did not know what normal performance was, discovered that the Rotax runs very well, but the Sea Doo is slow to accellerate from a stop, it also is pretty slow to get the hull on plane with 2 passengers. After much research and finding this Forum, I have now learned that there is such a thing as a wear ring! and the Jet Pump has oil in it! Have ordered the parts and will attempt to install next week. Removed the pump tonight and discoved that there are large pieces of the no doubt original wear ring missing. Would appreciate it if any of you experienced folks could reccomend a PWC that is stable enough for a couple of old people to go slow on without tipping over. I will keep the original SPX until everything on it is show room functional. This is a really good Forum, has allowed me to learn a lot. PS If you see old people on an old Sea Doo on Lake Texoma, please do not point & laugh
