What a day!

smokeonthewater · #1 07-29-2013, 12:09 AM

So last week I picked up a couple of Kaw zxi900 jetskis and put some wrench time into gettin em running... today a friend and I took em out on the Ohio river and about 7 miles up river I smacked something in the water at about 50 mph... less than a minute later I was in the water next to a mostly submerged ski..... sooo we push pull and drag it up onto a log at the bank and drain the water and I take off on the other one for the dock... )wow the river was rough today).... I get home and hook up to the montecarlo and another friend hooks up the the ski trailer... we head back to the river and 3 hours after leaving him we get back to the friend sitting with the busted ski.... He informs me that of the 30-50 a couple dozen ski's boats that went by he heard several people make comments about the half sunk jetski but not one single person offered to help... disgusting... we didn't need help but still....

Sooo I strapped a throwable pfd over the hole with two ratchet straps and pumped out the water... then we floated it to the back of the boat and the three of us wrestled one edge onto the swim platform and strapped it up out of the water..... My DID get on plane with it there but man did she point for the stars for a while as she worked to gain speed.... what a day... $280 in gas and one jetski for a day on the water...... WORTH IT....... sorta

ps the engine of the ski was fully submerged but I did manage to get it empty and eventually got it fired up... will do a compression test tomorrow but I think it's ok.....

RidgeRunner · #2 07-29-2013, 06:40 AM

Dang Smoke, that is an adventure there. The Monte Carlo got up with the ski on back is amazing. I don't know if I would have even tried that. Way to adapt.

smokeonthewater · #3 07-29-2013, 10:20 AM

Oh yeah.. it WAS quite an adventure... afterwards we went and tied up at our favorite waterside bar n grill and had burgers and a toast to "good friends and bad decisions"
Forgive the shredded seat... was planning to replace this week
IMG_0781.jpg

Destroyer · #4 07-29-2013, 12:10 PM

Sorry for the loss of the ski. Glad you're ok and not injured and that you got back safely. Is the ski's hull repairable?

smokeonthewater · #5 07-29-2013, 09:48 PM

thx

yeah I can glass it BUT a friend of mine knows a guy who has the same ski w a blown motor... might be able to pick it up cheap...... fingers crossed.

willy · #6 07-29-2013, 10:32 PM

Good luck, hope it works out!

smokeonthewater · #7 07-29-2013, 11:15 PM

is it wrong that I am imagining 3/8" HDPE being riveted to the bottom so I can do it again??? LOL J/K

smokeonthewater · #8 07-30-2013, 08:05 PM

Well I just did the compression test.... when I bought em I had 120 120 and 119.... after riding for a couple hours and subsequent drowning I now have 122 122 and as the battery was dying and barely cranking 119..... I bet the last one would be 121 or 122 if the batt had held up

I'd say the engine is fine :yay:

smokeonthewater · #9 08-08-2013, 02:48 PM

Update!
I now have the donor ski ($450 with NICE trailer) and have begun surgery.... Had some Nasty tumors to remove tho... She had set unattended for nearly a decade in a pole barn after the engine blew and was partially disassembled.... HOARDS of evil mice had infiltrated her bowels and taken up residence and then to add insult to injury the PO decided to hose it off and out and set it closed up in the sun for a couple days prior to my picking it up.... Well he managed to wet down the years of rodent nests and feces making a dark brown slurry that plugged the drain hole and also he managed to drown about a dozen mice that were lodged in all sorts of inaccessible parts of the hull behind flotation foam.

On a highly accurate scale of 1-10 the smell was a 29.235!
I seriously almost puked several times while stripping the engine, tank,exhaust, etc, and cleaning it out.... 2 days 2 trips to the car wash MANY gallons of water, and 3-4 gallons of bleach and I am almost ready to start the transplant of vital organs to give her life.
MUAHAHAHAHA!

As I type the smell rates about a 1.5 on the 1-10 scale and she is sitting nose down, full to the top with water and 2 gallons of bleach... I have a 480 gph bilge pump lodged inside running from a battery and charger aimed to cause the water to circulate and more and more nest material is constantly being dislodged.

She should take her first breath by this weekend.

RidgeRunner · #10 08-09-2013, 11:38 AM

Damn, I know that smell. The little rat bastids got into the flats boat a while back. Chewed some non-vital wiring but chewed a hole or three in the stowed away bimini. Those f-ers had to die.. Rat turds a-plenty. Earlier that day one of my ex-employees managed to toast the stock engine in my 1989 GMC Sierra. I lent him the truck out of the kindness of my heart. So he re-paid me in kind. The official story, He was just cruising around when all of the sudden it threw a rod, broke the cam in three and chunked the rear cam journal out the back of the block and into the flex plate wiping out the transmission too. I was at the end of my rope. Refusing to be whipped, I overcame with a few thousand more of the$e..and a friend who lent me his truck so I could get the flats boat to the boat wash facility. LOL Lemonade anyone? BTW- On teardown, the SBC had broken a hydraulic lifter, at 6000 rpm no doubt. Starved the back of the block for oil, spun a bearing and voila destroyed in seconds. I never believed his BS story and he was subsequently fired. Best move I ever made.