2014 AR210, 2009 AR230, 2016 AR192 Need Help!

[Double4me]

Hello! Sorry for the late reply and not following up earlier. Thank you for asking @GnarlyThrust ! We ended up getting the 2014 AR210 and so far we really like it. I am glad I went dual engine and didn't get anything smaller. We have used it quite a bit this summer already. There are a couple of small things that I have noticed but hasn't really impacted our fun. The first is even with 4 people on board and gear my top speed on the speedometer is around 30 mph. I have not tested it against gps speed yet but I think it is fairly accurate. There are no dings out of the impellers and the motors appear to run great. I was expected to get around 40 mph but maybe I was being unrealistic? Any 2014 AR210 owners out there let me know what your experiences are? Could this just be 10 years of wear on the impellers and wear ring? I wouldn't think it would cause 10 mph in loss but this is a new arena for me.

The other thing I noticed is the pisser's don't have anything coming out at idle speed. When you get up to speed they work, just not when you are puttering around. So far this hasn't been a problem until yesterday. A couple of times I had the high heat warming come on. We were tubing at the time and we briefly slowed down to chat with the tubers. I started my engines back up and while we were going slow I got the alarm. After turning off the engines and firing them back up it went away. Any advice on if the pisser's should be going all the time? I had the warning later in the day as well and about the same thing, it went away after refiring the engines. At this point it is on my radar, but I have to learn more about the cooling system before I will be alarmed.

Other than that we live it so far. Here is a pic of us in the middle of the lake with my brother in laws family tied up to their 2014 242S. I was actually on a tube when this was taken so I am not in the picture. I have since made dock sticks to connect the boats together in the rear. It eliminates the need for bumpers.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

There should always be pilot water ( I don’t like the term “pisser”) flowing at idle. When you say there is flow from the pilot water outlets at speed, is it strong ?

Have you checked the filter blocks on the side of the jet pumps where the cooling water gets pumped into the engine?
Was this boat used in salt water before you bought it or now?
Have you checked the gap between the impeller blades and the wear ring?
What condition are your clean out plugs in?

 

[Acard7]

If I’m idling I do not have water coming out of the pilots. If I am in no wake mode I might have a little bit of water coming out, but very seldomly see any until I reach higher RPMs. That being said, I have never had a temperature warning at idle except the one time there was something in my impellers causing cavitation, which in turn impeded cooling line flow.

So my advice, check your impellers via clean out plugs, usually the culprit.

 

[Double4me]

Thank you @FSH 210 Sport for the quick reply. I will have to check the filters when I get a chance. We keep our boat at my in-laws which is a few miles away from the lake. The flow out at speed seems to be good, but it's quite possible that it should be steonger. Coming from the outboard world it seems good but I could be wrong ?. The boat hasn't been in salt water. I haven't checked the gap yet but that is on my to do list. And the clean out plugs are in good shape to my eye. They go in without trouble, lock tight, and can be removed easily. I take them out after each outing.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

Are you experiencing any cavitation?

 

[Double4me]

That's where I suffer from being a newbie, it's hard for me to judge if there is cavatation and to what degree. To me I believe there may be some cavatation. It's not anything that I notice when running it gently. But when pulling tubes, and depending on the load, it seems to have some cavatation. Now ... Am I experience cavatation or just the limits of this boat in relation to motors, load, size of tubers, etc. when we are turning there is an expected bog down but it can take a bit to recover. That is where I think I may be experiencing some cavatation at its worst.

I wish I could provide a more certain answer for you, and eventually I will learn the subtle nuances of a jet boat, but for now I can provide a newbies perspective.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

That's where I suffer from being a newbie, it's hard for me to judge if there is cavatation and to what degree. To me I believe there may be some cavatation. It's not anything that I notice when running it gently. But when pulling tubes, and depending on the load, it seems to have some cavatation. Now ... Am I experience cavatation or just the limits of this boat in relation to motors, load, size of tubers, etc. when we are turning there is an expected bog down but it can take a bit to recover. That is where I think I may be experiencing some cavatation at its worst.

I wish I could provide a more certain answer for you, and eventually I will learn the subtle nuances of a jet boat, but for now I can provide a newbies perspective.

So what happens if yiu hammer the throttles from a stand still?

 

[Double4me]

I would say it takes a second or two to feel like it's fully grabbing and taking off. I will have to test that out the next time we are out and pay attention to it.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

I would say it takes a second or two to feel like it's fully grabbing and taking off. I will have to test that out the next time we are out and pay attention to it.

Thats cavitation …. Some is normal, but yours sounds a bit excessive, hard to say without being there. Does it start cavitating when you are pulling tubes, IE you see the tachs max out and hear the engines spool up?

 

[Double4me]

Nope. At full song I am usually around 8,000 rpm (that was yesterday anyways when I was paying attention to the RPM), but no spiking or pegging to the max RPM. When I was taking it on a test drive this spring I experienced that on one of the motors, but that was caused by the cleanout plug not being fully seated ?. But I currently don't have any spiking or pegging of the RPM's.

 

[Double4me]

We plan on going out on Saturday. Before we go out I will check the inlet filters, and I am going to replace the spark plugs. The non Yamaha dealer that we bought it from said they were good. But I am changing them anyways. My piece of mind is worth $50 and some time. It may be hard to do an apples to apples comparison since the load will be less, but I will see if I can notice a difference. Thank you all for your help.

 

[Double4me]

We did go out this last Saturday. Before we went out I did check the filters and they were clean. I didn't have time to text down all the hoses to see if anything was kinked, but both act the same so if there is a restriction it would be the same restriction for each engine. It was wavy out and we didn't do any tubing. We did spend a fair amount of time in low speee and no wake mode sightseeing and didn't have a problem.

I checked a couple of the spark plugs and they looked and gapped good, so I didn't replace them yet. With just 4 people onboard I didn't see much difference in top speed. I also wasn't able to get a long run since it was really wavy in the main body of water. I may just wait and change the plugs next spring.

I did another visual check on the impellers and didn't notice any gouges or anything. I will have to get some feeler gauges since you can't tell by eye. However my guess is if they are worn it's not by much.

My take away .... It's possible the performance that I am seeing is just the performance of this boat. It hasn't stopped us from tubing or having people with us. And mostly importantly it hasn't stopped us from having fun. And honestly these things are things that I am noticing, my family thinks everything is good . With a little over a month of good lake weather for us I may just leave things alone for now.