WAJetboating
Member
...but my wife can't.
{grin}
We were experimenting with wakeboard handling and I asked her to shorten the rope. She did, then started the engine and sucked the rope right into the jetdrive, not realizing she had drifted over it while making the adjustment. The Spectra towrope was banjo-string tight from the tower, around the hull, to the intake.
Thankfully, she heard the engine's idling sound change and instantly hit the keyswitch. I walked home, grabbed a jetski, and towed the boat back to our dock. I put the boat up on the AirDock and inflated the rear bags a big more than usual to give me better access to the intake, hoping I could unwind things without having to get out the trailer.
I removed the plugs and the flywheel cover, showed my wife how to rotate the crankshaft with the flywheel, and then went below to pull on the rope and thus indicate which direction she should turn the flywheel. I got a good grip on the rope for the first pull, and... the rope fell out of the intake! No more than a few inches of rope were in there, and it felt like none had wrapped the impeller shaft at all.
A mirror and flashlight revealed nothing else amiss. I cleaned and reinstalled the plugs, buttoned everything up, and took the boat for a flawless test run. No cavitation, no vibration, the usual great acceleration and ~53 MPH top speed (down a couple of MPH due to the tower).
Amazingly, the rope was also relatively undamaged - the fancy plastic sheath was cut but the Spectra core was fine. I actually wakeboarded a bit longer using it, though I'll probably replace it at the end-of-season sales just to be sure.
My suspicion is that a small loop of the rope got caught by the leading edge of the impeller. When I removed the spark plugs the engine's compression probably relaxed enough to rotate backwards and take the tension out, then when I pulled on it it just fell out of the intake grate. The other possibility is that the rope got pinched between the impeller and wear ring. After my mini-overhaul last spring there was only ~0.014 of clearance, probably tight enough to hold the rope taut until the impeller could rotate backwards a bit.
Overall, a lot better than it might have been. Kudos to my wife for having the presence of mind to quickly shut off the engine when she heard something unusual!
{grin}
We were experimenting with wakeboard handling and I asked her to shorten the rope. She did, then started the engine and sucked the rope right into the jetdrive, not realizing she had drifted over it while making the adjustment. The Spectra towrope was banjo-string tight from the tower, around the hull, to the intake.
Thankfully, she heard the engine's idling sound change and instantly hit the keyswitch. I walked home, grabbed a jetski, and towed the boat back to our dock. I put the boat up on the AirDock and inflated the rear bags a big more than usual to give me better access to the intake, hoping I could unwind things without having to get out the trailer.
I removed the plugs and the flywheel cover, showed my wife how to rotate the crankshaft with the flywheel, and then went below to pull on the rope and thus indicate which direction she should turn the flywheel. I got a good grip on the rope for the first pull, and... the rope fell out of the intake! No more than a few inches of rope were in there, and it felt like none had wrapped the impeller shaft at all.
A mirror and flashlight revealed nothing else amiss. I cleaned and reinstalled the plugs, buttoned everything up, and took the boat for a flawless test run. No cavitation, no vibration, the usual great acceleration and ~53 MPH top speed (down a couple of MPH due to the tower).
Amazingly, the rope was also relatively undamaged - the fancy plastic sheath was cut but the Spectra core was fine. I actually wakeboarded a bit longer using it, though I'll probably replace it at the end-of-season sales just to be sure.
My suspicion is that a small loop of the rope got caught by the leading edge of the impeller. When I removed the spark plugs the engine's compression probably relaxed enough to rotate backwards and take the tension out, then when I pulled on it it just fell out of the intake grate. The other possibility is that the rope got pinched between the impeller and wear ring. After my mini-overhaul last spring there was only ~0.014 of clearance, probably tight enough to hold the rope taut until the impeller could rotate backwards a bit.
Overall, a lot better than it might have been. Kudos to my wife for having the presence of mind to quickly shut off the engine when she heard something unusual!
