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When Nice Boats Go Bad (part 6)

Chuck Buck

Jet Boat Addict
Messages
89
Reaction score
98
Points
97
Location
Lake St Clair
Boat Make
Sugar Sand
Year
2004
Boat Model
Mirage
Boat Length
18
Chapter 10: Willy Make It? Betty Won’t.
The flywheel puller came in Friday night, and Saturday’s forecast looked lousy. I somehow delayed my gratification and did all my weekend chores Saturday (good boy!), so the first order of business Sunday morning (after making French toast and bacons for the wife unit and taking my striped buddy for a long walk to the lake) was to pull the flywheel. The nut came off pretty easily for having a torque spec of 125 lb-ft., so that was another screw-up I found. Anyway, the puller worked effortlessly and the flywheel looked new underneath. Cast in the bottom was “Made in Korea”, so I have to believe this was replaced too. The magnets wouldn’t budge (good) and the stator had a date code of 7/26/17, so at least now I know these two should never be an issue.

Cha-ching!
Korea.JPG
Stator - Trigger.JPG

Oh, the CDI Electronics troubleshooting guide said the stator should read 1k Ohms for the big coils and 60 Ohms for the small coils. Mine had 3.7k for the big, 104 for the small. I said to myself out loud “there is no friggin way that new (OEM) stator is bad” and moved on. Good thing I did, because later during lunch, I looked at the OEM resistance table and it said 3-4k Ohms for the big and 90 to 120 for the small. Mine is PERFECTLY in spec. I’ll write CDI and give them screenshots of their faux pas at a later date. After I swapped the #2 and #4 coil wires, #6 which had no spark, fired normally too. Don’t ask me why, since these CDI systems are voodoo to me. Funny, I noticed “they” swapped the two trigger harnesses to the switchboxes according to the OEM schematic, so I made them correct. I took every inch of conduit off the engine harness and traced every wire according to the OEM schematic. Then I sealed out any corrosion and moisture with dielectric grease in the connections, and made sure all the bullet connectors fit tight. If not, I crimped the female terminal until it took solid effort to fully seat the male terminal (almost sounds NSFW!) I di’int have the “special tool” to hold the flywheel, but was able to make do with a ratchet strap to keep it from spinning while I torqued the big nut.

Rats nest:
rats nest.JPG

Anyway, after I got everything back together and tried to start it – nothing. Zero spark on any wire. Huh! So I rechecked everything and still no spark. You don’t suppose…so I re-crossed the trigger harnesses and it went “ka-VROOM!” The starter barely engaged before it fired. I said to myself “well, I’ll be dipped….” THAT revision will go [went] into my working hard-copy of the schematic in my binder. So since I had to turn the idle screw WAY down with all 6 cylinders firing now, that affected the timing adjustment from last week. I readjusted the timing at home and the idle speed best as I could without a tach in the slip, so I’ll need to fine-tune that.

Chapter 11: Sea Trial #3 – Victory at Last?
It was pretty crappy weather for a pleasure cruise, chilly and sprinkling here and there, but pleasure was the furthest thing from my mind. I needed to find out if I had finally licked the performance issue. I left the harbor and no wake zone, then tried to gas it, but it was too rough (two-footers). I was the only soul on the lake. As I got up on plane, to my disbelief, the speedo read nada, 0. WTF! Then I remembered I had left the rubber tube off at the back while I had the dash in and out repeatedly. By the time I caught on, about a quart of water was forced thru the tube and laying in the dash console. Oops! HAHAHA, what a maroon! After that was dealt with, and with a stiff breeze from the North, I had to go straight into the weather about 5 miles to get in calmer waters below Huron Pointe. Once I got there, I gassed it and look out! The boat quickly climbed to a respectable 44 mph. Woohoo! Turning around for home, it repeated the 44 mph. Back in the rough, I slowed to a less bouncy and economical 22 mph and eventually turned hard to starboard and my home harbor.

First Epilogue: Looking Back, Going Forward.
In the end, “they” (previous owners/mechanics) put on a new battery, new flywheel, new stator, new trigger, and one new switchbox (prolly $1000+ in parts alone) within two years’ time. And after all that, they left two coil wires crossed. I’m thinking at some point the engine wasn’t running, hence all the new parts, but the crossed wires is one of the reasons I got the boat cheap. As an aside, I bought my last boat cheap after the then-current owner and I experienced a major malfunction during that sea trial, and that turned out to be a loose hose clamp. I still need to know what the WOT rpm is, so maybe Earl the Pearl (local Marine Salvage) has a used tach that’ll fit for the time being. If the wear ring and impeller had a tighter fit than the 0.060 clearance they currently have, perhaps that would increase the top end, but these components require cubic dollars to refurbish. Is this a priority? Not exactly. The grandkids come over Saturday, and the weather looks encouraging (80’s with a possible late thunderstorm), so I feel confident the boat is safe and that we’ll all have a great time on the water.

Is it time yet?!
Not yet.JPG

Last Sunday, on my way back to the harbor, and feeling satisfied I had finally triumphed over the engine problem, I passed Veterans Memorial Park where so many evenings I had sat and looked longingly out over the lake. And even though my ears were freezing and I was tired and hungry, I said out loud to myself “just LOOK at all those poor people on land right now!”

tl;dr; the boat is running good now.

[Infomercial voice-over] “But wait! There’s more!”
 
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