I actually had a stealership moment over the weekend. A buddy set it all up...I knew we were headed to shop of some sort.
The 96 XP had stator problems and he had replaced the parts and put it all back together and told us it would barely pop with gas poured down the plugs. My buddy talked him down to $450 and decided to go get it. It was really clean in the pictures.
The GPS gets us there and I realize its a Ski-doo dealer! I told my buddy this doesnt look good...how could a dealer not figure it out? The guy was late to meet us and it was sitting in the lot, so we got to look it over w/o the guy there.
We dropped a battery in, pulled the choke, and hit the starter. This thing had sat outside in 10 degree weather for at least a day and had not been messed with in over a month. 10 sec crank and BOOM fires right up, sounds good. We let it get a little warm and reved it a few times and it was fine. WTF? We looked it over and found some damage from a sponson ripping thru (minor) but otherwise it was in really good shape. Took the battery out and put away the tools and compression tester.
So the guy finally shows up and I start grilling him...he says the dealer had taken it in on trade last spring and he bought it and ran it all summer with no issues till aug. He also said they really didnt work on jetskis. They dug into it in Oct and replaced the stator, flywheel, pickup, and rectifier. I asked where the battery was if he had ran it all summer and he said he had tried to charge it the day before for us and it wouldnt take a charge anymore.
Next question....so this is the battery you were using when you did the repair? YEP!!! A freakin DEALER didnt even think that the battery maybe bad.
Got him to knock $25 off for the sponson damage and drove home with a pretty good deal.
