Shonuff's 1996 SuperJet from Grand Rapids

[Mouthfulloflake]

dang man.

a couple of comments.

you do METICULOUS work.
I wish I had the knowledge, desire, and patience to work on stuff like that!

I love that sign on the wall. ( democrat parking only)

and you really couldnt lift the engine out yourself?

maybe thats why my back is always hurting... hmmmm

it looks AWESOME.

great job and I appreciate all of the photos and shared knowledge.

:biggthumpup:

 

[Idok]

Looking Good. :arms:

I didn't know you optometrists would get your hands dirty (or that you owned DeWalt Tools). Of course the only other Eye Doc I know is Idok, so maybe you understand my confusion. :cool2:

Really Nice Work.

hey, I can get dirty.......just cant afford good tools!!!!!! :lightning: :1244:













nice job bubba!!!!!!!!!

 

[Shonuff]

nice job mike!!!!!!!!!

Dammit, now everyone knows my name. The Shonuff mystique is gone.:frown: :bs2:

 

[michael950]

As far as the screws for the electrical box are concerned, the actual thread pitch is located in the FAQ:

Reference Library - replacement part numbers

If you know you have other bolts to buy, you can save on shipping from bolt depot, also try McMaster. They have a large variety of stainless hardware. If you have long bolts, call to make sure they are fully treaded (if needed).

Even in fresh water, I would be leary of using anything but stainless unless you coat it with some type of water inhibitor (oil, WD-40).

 

[Shonuff]

I was really sketchy about what to do with the top end. I was there at Opie’s holding the gauge in my hands when it cranked out 160 psi equally in both cylinders (I assume the domes are 35cc but they very well could be 37s if 37s are even made) and I thought if there were going to be problems, they would be showing up on a gauge so I made the decision to leave the 62T case and the 61X cylinders alone with all internals. With the intake and reeds out though, I sprayed some fogging oil over the moving parts on the inside, covered the ports with shop rags and focused my attention back to my carbs.

Rebuilding carbs without fuel pumps is fairly easy and straightforward. I replaced the diaphragms, o-rings, and fuel filters which looked about as bad as expected. I don’t have a pic but they looked like they were about one-third of the way filled with hairy caramel.

I ordered new socket-head bolts for the carb adapter plate and the intake manifold to the case.

I put the carbs back on their adapter plate with new 46mm green gasket, reused the old adapter plate gasket with some new hi-temp gasket sealant and bolted all to the intake manifold. ***LESSON LEARNED*** Mount the carbs to the adapter plate before you mount the adapter plate to the intake. Let Shonuff screw that up for everyone else.

 

[Shonuff]

Painting the ski was terrifying.

I have never painted a ski before so I relied heavily on DayLite’s help and he essentially walked me through it. I used PPG’s Omni line of paints as they were the less expensive of the good paints to use. I started with the thick, gooey MP181 filler primer that I had to mix with MR186 medium reducer at a one-to-one ratio to thin it out and make it workable. The gun was an Ingersoll Rand gravity-fed conventional spray gun with a water separator installed in the line. The primer was laid down on the bottom of the hull first and looked like thick chocolate milk. :smile: Because of its thickness, it really didn’t want to run at all. The priming was very straightforward and reasonably easy. I laid the goo down and left it alone. Because of all the deep scratches and the moderately unsmooth gelcoat, the bottom of the hull wasn’t as flat as I would like but since it was the bottom, I didn’t worry too much about it. After letting the filler primer dry for a few days, the ski was flipped and the top was sprayed with the foothold turf (the footholds come pre-turfed) taped off. The ride plate was painted while it was off the ski. It was placed on the ski for this pic.

 

[yama_freak615]

Refoaming a ski is as much fun as defoaming a ski is a PITA.

I purchased a kit of three pound expanding urethane foam from US Composites and used medium sized translucent plastic cups to measure and mix the stuff at 1:1. I propped the ski upright in my garage and tied the bow eye to my garage door frame for stability.

I mixed my foam parts, stirred the hell out of them, and poured the mix into the factory pour holes. It was about 95 degrees outside and about 90 in my garage. The mix began to slowly expand at about 40 seconds. I think I poured about four and a half cups per side allowing about twenty minutes between pours.

i kno this is old but u could have went to lowes and got some in a can. it comes in a can like spray cheese and it works really good. we've used it on freestyle kits and works great

 

[yamaslut]

i kno this is old but u could have went to lowes and got some in a can. it comes in a can like spray cheese and it works really good. we've used it on freestyle kits and works great

oh ********... you just opened a can of worms..:biggrin:

I agree w/ you, but you will find many people who CLAIM "great stuff" is garbage compared to US COmposites stuff... I don't agree. It all will absorb water if ther's a leak when enclosed in an area like that...

 

[yama_freak615]

oh ********... you just opened a can of worms..:biggrin:

I agree w/ you, but you will find many people who CLAIM "great stuff" is garbage compared to US COmposites stuff... I don't agree. It all will absorb water if ther's a leak when enclosed in an area like that...

well we've used it on a couple and had no complaints from em so it seems very good. and when it drys its about as hard to get water in it as a closed dry pack. it really does work very well.

 

[yamaslut]

well we've used it on a couple and had no complaints from em so it seems very good. and when it drys its about as hard to get water in it as a closed dry pack. it really does work very well.

I'm w/ ya brotha

 

[ironhorse]

Outstanding Thread!!!

Keep up the great work!

 

[Idok]

well we've used it on a couple and had no complaints from em so it seems very good. and when it drys its about as hard to get water in it as a closed dry pack. it really does work very well.

IMO the great stuff would be perfect for patch jobs, filling in small gaps, or foaming around holds that had previously dry foam...



for a COMPLETE refoam, gotta go with pour foam.....you'll get much lesser degree of air pockets as compared to the spray stuff...

 

[sclevela]

IMO the great stuff would be perfect for patch jobs, filling in small gaps, or foaming around holds that had previously dry foam...



for a COMPLETE refoam, gotta go with pour foam.....you'll get much lesser degree of air pockets as compared to the spray stuff...

um excuse me if i sound like a moron..........but uhhhh isnt the purpose of foam to trap air? in tiny little pockets?

 

[skysurfer2010]

great thread! thanks for the write up. ski is lookin is great so far!

 

[Speedfreak]

well we've used it on a couple and had no complaints from em so it seems very good. and when it drys its about as hard to get water in it as a closed dry pack. it really does work very well.

I just pulled out my old footholds and there was Greatstuff and the pour in stuff in there. The great stuff lets water drain through it and the pour in stuff seems to hold it inside so when I do my refoam I am using the Greatstuff for support then installing tiny 1/4 or 1/2 inch drain holes in the back so that it can drain during winter or weeks that I don't ride. We all know that they get water in there just how to get it out is the main concern..

 

[yama_freak615]

I just pulled out my old footholds and there was Greatstuff and the pour in stuff in there. The great stuff lets water drain through it and the pour in stuff seems to hold it inside so when I do my refoam I am using the Greatstuff for support then installing tiny 1/4 or 1/2 inch drain holes in the back so that it can drain during winter or weeks that I don't ride. We all know that they get water in there just how to get it out is the main concern..

well i never thought about it that way

 

[Shonuff]

**NOTE**
Filler primer fills scratches from sanding which would absorb more paint and therefore isn’t sanded prior to laying down your base coat. Props to Yamaslut on that one.

I really like Yamaha blue but I don’t like the purple that goes along with it so I tried to find something that looked similar to the OEM Yamaha blue, didn’t have much purple, and had a metallic sheen. I went with PPG Omni Viper GTS Blue Pearlcoat which looked beautiful on the chip in the book, beautiful in the paint can, and beautiful on the ski once it was thinned with the MR186 at one-to-one and about two full coats were laid down. The wet paint looked great but lost a lot of its sheen once it dried. Fortunately, the clear coat fixed all of that.

For those of you wanting to paint your ski, know that clear coat is such a wonderful yet wicked mistress: It is insanely expensive at $125 a gallon, it wants to run all the time, but man o man did it make my paint look like blue glass after three coats. I went with Deltron DC3000 clear mixed with CCH3095 hardener at four clear to one hardener. I did't get the flex additive as I had just dropped $270 on paint and it completely slipped my mind.

I had clearcoat runs everywhere. (Yeah, that’s my bad. :dunce: You need to go a little lighter with the clear, btw.) Fortunately, the decals were going to cover about 90% of the runs.

 

[Shonuff]

I painted my engine bay white with rattle can American Tradition glossy white appliance epoxy (props again,Yamaslut) that I covered with the PPG clearcoat.

 

[Shonuff]

I don't personally like paint schemes.

Blowsion does very impressive work but I would never want one of their paint schemes on my boat. It's just not for me; I like more of a stock look to the ski.

I initially wanted the factory 2003 decal set for my ski but I found out that the decals are printed on a blue-violet background. Since my ski isn't blue-violet, it wouldn't blend. I contacted ExoticSigns and ordered their 2001 graphic kit with some red to it to match my footholds. I VERY CAREFULLY installed the rather expensive decals and then VERY CAREFULLY removed and threw away the starboard rear logo decal as I installed it an impressive ninety degrees off. :banghead: I called Exotic and ordered another one for that side and one for the handlepole.

I haven'treceived them yet but I am rocking the X-H2O logo.

 

[CoreyLKN]

Sweet ski man:biggthumpup: :arms: !!!