Flipping couches for fun and profit

[WFO Speedracer]

I got sidetracked , the Toyota popped a head gasket and my girl is leaving Friday on a trip to Africa , at any rate I took a break from the GTS to get a handle on what was up with the 4TEC SC ski , I did get it running , bad fuel pump , three bad injectors and two bad coil packs later , I am still negotiating on price but I can't see going higher than $500 on this ski , yes I do have all the parts here except for one injector , but it also needs a hood , a multi gauge , new seats , bumper inserts and several other small things, I have those as well and I can of course recover the seats , from a customer standpoint it's not worth repairing , from my standpoint I can fix it and make a really nice ski without spending a fortune and make a good chunk of change in the process and it will make a good Winter project.

 

[Batteryman]

I got sidetracked , the Toyota popped a head gasket and my girl is leaving Friday on a trip to Africa , at any rate I took a break from the GTS to get a handle on what was up with the 4TEC SC ski , I did get it running , bad fuel pump , three bad injectors and two bad coil packs later , I am still negotiating on price but I can't see going higher than $500 on this ski , yes I do have all the parts here except for one injector , but it also needs a hood , a multi gauge , new seats , bumper inserts and several other small things, I have those as well and I can of course recover the seats , from a customer standpoint it's not worth repairing , from my standpoint I can fix it and make a really nice ski without spending a fortune and make a good chunk of change in the process and it will make a good Winter project.

Ouch! There is always something needing fixed isn't there. Lol

Definitely sounds like it needs some parts and the know how that a lot of people don't have to get it going. $500 would make it worth you while it seems. I hope it works out!

 

[Batteryman]

I finally got mine cleaned up and posted. It came with the decals. We called it hell raiser. Polished it and installed a new starter relay.

 

[WFO Speedracer]

I finally got mine cleaned up and posted. It came with the decals. We called it hell raiser. Polished it and installed a new starter relay.

Nice

 

[WFO Speedracer]

Well it's official , I spoke to the owner this morning and gave him the list of stuff wrong with this ski and a rundown on how much it will cost to fix it , the Seadoo is mine for $500.00 I will wrap all the details up next week sometime and get this slid off on a workstand.

 

[Batteryman]

Nice! When do used ski sales slow down in your area?

 

[WFO Speedracer]

About now lol , truefully I will be lucky to get rid of these last three this year , it's ok though I will finish them up list them and if they don't sell they will be ready to roll next year.

Luckily I am pretty close to Destin, Ft Walton beach and orange beach , Gulf shores so I will most likely advertise them in that area. if they don't sell here quickly .

 

[Myself]

I just put the spit-shine on a couple of mine I finished up. Wife and I rode 'em for 30-45 minutes Friday evening. I put a real lashing on that Gsx lol!!
Ready to sell!.........er flip!

 

[WFO Speedracer]

Back at it this morning , I pulled the carb to have a look see, the main diaphragm is still nice and pliable with no pinholes , good to go there , not that uncommon on Seadoos really , the carb is really clean inside which means someone must have run it out of gas when they put it up , also the fuel lines have already been replaced and are still nice and pliable so scratch that off the list as well , I haven't pulled the pump side apart but I doubt there will be any surprises there either.

I siphoned the really nasty gas out of the fuel tank , add another 30 minutes to the tab and most likely zero dollars in parts, I would say add $20.00 for fuel but I am just going to siphon the fuel back out of the 4 TEC and use it since it has Berryman B12 already in it.

I might replace the carb base gasket or maybe a pump diaphragm , the day is still young IDK..

 

[WFO Speedracer]

On these the filler neck goes in at the front of the tank so using a flashlight you can visually inspect most of the tank, I used a piece of fuel line and small pieces of paper towel that I twisted up to fit inside the fuel line to mop the tank out from the filler neck , towards the end I lifted the nose of the ski up and down and tilted the ski to one side on the trailer to get the last little bit out. , when the paper towels come out clean and dry the tank is done,. If you want to get really crazy you can pour in some Berryman B12 and do it all over again , not feeling crazy today.

I also pulled the carb completely apart and found nothing that didn't wipe off with WD40 and a paper towel , even the internal filter was clean. also little to nothing inside the fuel filter up front , I got really lucky on this one.

I added a pic but I doubt you can make a lot out of that pic, kind of hard to take a pic of the inside of a fuel tank. It's probably now cleaner than 80% of the fuel tanks out there in running skis and I am good with that.. Add aNOnother 30 minutes and zero dollars sprnt to the tab.

 

[WFO Speedracer]

I also cleaned the fuel filter , I take it apart drop the element into the cup and fill it with Pine-sol , in about 30 minutes you can take it out , wash everything out with water and put it back together ,

Pine-sol makes an excellent cleaner for fuel residues , I used the Pine-sol and a paper towel to clean the outside of the filter cup which was absolutely filthy and almost solid black in color .

If you are wondering yes Pine-sol will also clean the inside of a fuel tank but it just might take a bit longer, use it full strength of course and keep turning the tanks so that different sides are facing up , leave it in there for a day or so ,then wash it out with water and let it dry.

 

[WFO Speedracer]

Now normally I could give a tinker damn how long it takes to do a job but I thought it would be fun to put a timer on this one , you know just to see if the old man has still got it , this is actual time , not flat rate BS , it included rounding up all the necessary tools and parts to complete the job.

Pump- wear ring removal-replacement : 18 minutes, that includes removing the driveshaft and the old wear ring and knocking in a new wear ring , it does not include putting the pump back it, the impeller has some slight damage so it will have to be removed from the pump and repaired. We are using a cheap Ebay wear ring because they are cheap and they work way better than the stock crap .

At the 31 minute mark I have the engine unbolted, exhaust hose and stator wires loose , it is tilted over and all four engine to cradle mount bolts have been tightened, I just needed enough room to get a Snap -on 17mm flex head wrench under there , that's the second pic.

At the 41 minute mark the engine is all bolted back down with the shims in the right place and the exhaust and stator wires are hooked back up , it's now ready for an alignment check and I can put the carb and flame arrestor back on, I do have to replace the oil feed lines first though , never , I mean never skip this part on a Seadoo , it will bite you in the worst possible way if you do and that wraps up the third pic , in conclusion I will have to say yes , the old man has still got it !

Lets be generous here and add another 45 minutes on the clock and a $20.00 wear ring.

 

[Batteryman]

That works out well that you can list them down in florida, I bet that really helps when its not peak season.

You work quick! Experience I'm sure also really helps.

Thanks for the tip on the pine sol. I have a SN tank out that could use some cleaning im sure.

 

[WFO Speedracer]

Pine -sol, purple stuff and Castrol Super clean all work really well, I haven't tried it but LA Awesome cleaner undiluted would probably work well also.

Replaced the oil lines, I use Tygon weedeater fuel line for oil lines, they are a little thicker on the wall size of the tubing , I resuse the stock clamps instead of using zip ties mostly because I have never seen an oil line come off of one with a stock style clamp on it, like I said the lines are slightly bigger , to compensate I use a center punch and a hammer to open the clamps up slightly.

Just place the clamp and centerpunch over any piece of metal that has a slightly smaller hole than the clamp and give it a tap, reverse the clamp and do it again, you can see in that first pic the difference between one that hasn't been enlarged and one that has .

When you put the clamps back on I use end nippers to retighten the clamps, you just pinch the ears on the clamps and you are done, the top hose is next to impossible to get to the clamp on so on those I remove the banjo bolt and fitting from the pump. put the hose on retighten the clamp then put it back on the pump.

The oil lines are done, the carb is back on, gas is back in the tank and the system is primed, to prime it I leave the return line loose then blow pressure into it , when you see gas coming out the return line on the carb it is primed and ready to fire up.

Add $3.00 for fuel line and $16.00 for fuel and another 30 minutes on the clock , I decided to leave the fuel in the 4 tec and go run it to check it out further, it has current regs on it and it just might be my rider for the rest of the year.

Headed out to the other shop now to remove the impeller and repair it , as soon as the pump is back on it , the silicone is cured , it is fired up and on a decent trailer it will be ready to be water tested. After that all that is left is cosmetic work

 

[WFO Speedracer]

So the impeller is done, only the front edges needed attention , nothing a few passes with the angle grinder can't fix , the jet pump oil what there still was of it was nasty and chunky and about 100 hrs overdue for an oil change , I cleaned it out with Berryman B12 carb cleaner and reassembled it.

While I still had the pump out of it I installed the battery and tried to fire it off , it was having none of it, I sprayed WRU down the carb and it kicked off and ran till it ran out of W4U , I did get it to rev up and run on the main jet but it would not crank without choking or idle.

It was at that very moment that I knew exactly where I had F'ed up , I did not pull the jet plate when I had the carb off and spray carb cleaner through the jets, mainly because I didn't have any car cleaner here.

So after securing a can of Berryman B12 I partially pulled the carb back off enough to get to the jet plate and sprayed Berryman B12 ( the greatest carb cleaner on the face of the planet bar none ) through the pilot jet and watched the bypass holes, all of them were now clear , back on the carb goes and after choking it the first time it now idles and it cranks before you can get your finger off of the start button , plus no more engine dancing all over the place.

I reached down and held the oil pump wide open to fill the lines back up and it is now smoking quite nicely and it sounds really good .

I still have to refill the jet pump with oil and put it back on , really about a 15-20 minute job , so this time around clock on another 30 minutes and $ 5.00 worth of carb cleaner although I really don't usually figure shop supplies into the equation.

 

[WFO Speedracer]

The jet pump is glued back in , driveshaft is all hooked up and secured , hoses are back on , PTO cover is on and the flame arrestor is back on, mechanically it is mostly done., pending the results of the water test , which may be tomorrow.

I have a brand new seat at the other shop I will retrieve when I head up that way tomorrow or Thursday , you make not like the color choice but It will be what it will be , I am going with different colors for the fore seat and the main seat for reasons. I do still have to round up a hood deflector and a start stop switch, I have both here on other skis.

Add another 30 minutes to the clock and I already had the jet pump oil and the right stuff silicone here so zero dollars .

 

[WFO Speedracer]

The DESS key on this was past being shot , it actually crumbled when I put it on the post and fell off what was left of the cord , amazingly it still worked as long as you held it on the post.

I was digging around looking for parts at the lake and I came across a ski with a dead engine that I had bought for parts , it had what appeared to be a brand new DESS key in the glovebox , so I snagged it and programmed it up to this ski , since this is an older ski it will program up with the handheld programmer , which makes this about a two minute process.

I programmed it up and vroom vroom

Time spent , maybe 5 minutes mostly because the programmer was searching for the last ski I hooked it up to and kicking off error codes and it took me a minute to get that cleared out of the programmers memory , total of zero dollars spent.

 

[WFO Speedracer]

We are now at $575.63 and about six hours of time spent on this machine , I do still have to buy a battery so another $45.00 to $50.00 will be added on there at some point , also there will be some time buffing the top and recovering the fore seat , there are a few very small gelcoat spots to fix , a switch to replace and grips to put on , then there is water testing etc , so lets say $625.63 for right now and I will bump it as I go.

Looks like it's going to be Thursday on the water test I have to make a lake trip tomorrow to drop off parts and pick up a Kawasaki 1100 with electrical issues .

 

[WFO Speedracer]

I retrieved the seat from the shop , it was quite dirty from sitting on the shelf but some LA Awesome cleaner perked it right up , that is a brand new NOS seat that was still in the plastic and it has been waiting for a machine to go on for some years now , there is still some mildew or something on the strap so I am removing just the strap and soaking it in ODOBAN , hopefully it will kill the mildew spots if not I can probably just flip it over or worst case cover it with vinyl and sew it.

That is probably the colors palate I am going with Purple fore seat , Yellow seat , but it saves me probably an hour to an hour and a half of recovering the original seat .

Time spent maybe 10 minutes , money spent $6.00 worth of LA Awesome cleaner and a new spray bottle .

 

[WFO Speedracer]

Today we are repairing the handlebar cover , this one is still fairly nice and hasn't yet reached the playdough stage so I am just respraying it purple using SEM vinyl dye.

You don't have to follow my instruction at all , this is how I do it, you can follow SEM's instructions and buy everything they tell you to buy and it will turn out beautiful, you will also be very , very broke.

They want you to use SEM soap , then SEM plastic or leather prep , then SEM adhesion promoter then SEM vinyl coat , yeah we are not doing that.

I started by spraying with LA Awesome cleaner and using a dish scrubber scrubbed the surface, then I use Clorox foaming cleaner to see if I could kill the mildew, once that is dry I use a rag and acetone, this opens the pores in the surface slightly.

Then I spray a couple of coats of Rustoleum adhesion promoter , you can use Bulldog if you want , this is much , much cheaper, then I spray a coat of SEM vinyl dye then wait about ten minutes and follow up with a second coat. The results speak for themselves SEM purple is pretty much an exact match to Seadoo or Yamaha purple . One can of this goes a long, long way, I have redone several skis with this one can of Marine coat vinyl dye.