Sportster RPMs seem high...

[despower]

It is just about time for us cold climate riders to be putting our sport boats away for the season. So I figured I would ask a simple question that may not been a problem.

I have noticed that I have to get the RPMs up pretty high to get to plane on my 06 Sportster - probably around 5500 rpm (about half throttle or so). Then I can back off a bit or increase throttle for more speed. Usually the RPMs are 6500 or above for any amount of speed (say above 20 mph) and I need to be up close to 8000 for top speed. My question is - is this normal? A buddy of mine commented that he thought my RPMs were high but he doesn't own a seadoo. As I have very little experience with the boat because I only bought it this season, I figured I would ask if this is normal with these boats.

Note that the boat seems to work fine (at least what I interpret as fine) and it gets up past 50 mph so I am not complaining about performance. The boat isn't that old but it had gone through two owners before i got it.

Des

 

[kustomkarl]

It sounds normal, but if it seems to have cavitation the wear ring might need attention. Usually the rpm's will go to full and the seadoo won't go fast from lack of thrust due to a bad wear ring.

Karl

 

[despower]

No I don't get cavitation. It runs pretty good as long as I 'give her' so to speak (not that this is a bad thing).

The only time I got cavitation was when I sucked up a piece of seaweed and had a devil of a time trying to get it out. Did the forward/reverse cycling thing and eventually had to limp back to port. The seaweed got released just as I was bringing it up to dock.

 

[kustomkarl]

That forward reverse thing does nothing...the engine and jet pump are always spinning in the same direction, pushing water out the nozzle on the jet pump. The only thing that changes is the reverse gate is in position to push the water to the front of the boat so it moves in the reverse direction, by blocking the nozzle from pushing water straight out the back. With the seadoo on the trailer, and not running, move the shifter and look at the reverse gate in different positions to understand how it works.

Karl

 

[despower]

Ah yes... while I am not looking at the Seadoo right now, I know exactly what you mean. I just naturally assumed that the impeller went in reverse and thus wondered what the gate was for. Now I know.

In that case, if you have something caught in the impeller, how does one get it free without trailering it? Perhaps I should do a search first because there are probably dozens of posts on this topic.

 

[suprajake]

As far as I know the easiest way is to shut the engine off and let gravity do the work. As long as they're not too bad in there they should come out. I've had decent luck doing that. The little book that came with my boat says you can also shift into reverse and do short fast revs, but I fail to see how that works, and have not had it work for me. What I was able to do was get going a decent speed, and shut the engine off, and that way the water pushes into the jet hopefully pushing the junk out the front.

Now, don't take this as 100% fact, I've only had my boat a month so I'm still new, but the shutting it off is the best I've read up so far.