Wear ring - replacement justified?

[frogman112]

My 2004 GTX 155 has just under 180 hours on it now. A couple of seasons ago I disassembled the pump and replaced all of the seals since it was never apart before and I wasn't sure about water intrusion. None was found and the bearing was in good shape, too. The wear ring and impeller looked good so I did not replace them.

Now that the next ski season is around the corner I removed the pump again figuring that it might be time to replace the wear ring / impeller, especially after 180 hours on the clock.

The SeaDoo manual specifies 0.014 inch max clearance between the impeller and wear ring. I've got between a line-to-line fit on one side to a maximum of 0.020 inch on the opposite. There is no runout of the shaft / bearing assembly so my guess is that the bore of the wear ring was not aligned when new. The groove in the wear ring is very shallow and does not have any chunks or grooves from debris in it.

My question is, is it even worth replacing the wear ring with this amount of radial clearance? Will I even notice it on the water? The impeller looks pretty good, just some minor nicks on the edges.

 

[jake865]

Having minimal wear around the impeller could cause cavitation but the only way to know with that little wear is running it on the water. As cheap as wear rings are I would just replace it.

 

[Ramiro Genoval]

With the perspective of your pics is hard to see the real space between the impeller and the wear ring. But watching the first pic, its having almost 2mm, and Yes, need to be replaced. its worth the money and the work, is so easy to do, seeing that you have already removed

 

[frogman112]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll go ahead and change it out and report back in a few months whether it made a noticeable difference.

 

[Arkie Bob]

If I already had it apart, yes I'd do a new wear ring.

 

[Rich_r31]

I have changed a half dozen or so wear rings over the years and I change them when my top end drops by 2 MPH or more.

 

[PeterC4]

You will notice an improvement in top speed with a new wear ring.

 

[frogman112]

I finally had the opportunity to take the ski out last weekend for the first time since I replaced the wear ring with a Sea-Doo unit. I used 5000 RPM as a reference before vs after. The speed increased from 28 to 32 MPH. RPM seemed more consistent at cruising speed as well.

 

[PeterC4]

A properly installed new wear ring will generally increase speed back to original specs.