2 replies to this topic

[capecoddoo]

Anyone else experienced this? My 2003 Challenger 2000, purchased new in 2003, started showing some stress cracks around powerhead last summer. Water intrusion commenced. We completely removed powerhead and pump, and reinforced glass underneath and on top. We then changed grommet that is instaled between pump and powerhead, as well as all gaskets, and reinstalled the whole assembly (at great expense and time mind you). Well three days of use later, a huge stress crack emerges a little further past where we repaired, and water is spewing in pretty heavy now (bilge pump comes on every 3-4 minutes).

Hull repair was covered under warranty, but repair shop pretty much said that the whole thickness/quality of the sea doo hull is crap and they don't believe it can be fixed without completely rebuilding the back of the boat/hull.

Anyone else experienced this? We never hit the boat, or grounded it by the way. It is run on Nantucket sound in Cape cod, so there are frequently 4 footers, it isn't a lake. Any other ocean users see this aroundyear 3-5 of ownership? Any suggestions?

In the meantime, I am installing a secondary bilge pump to keep up with the leak until a permanent fix can be determined by BRP and the repair shop.

[Kevin Leclair]

We had some stress cracks come up on our 2000 160 Speedster at about year 4. They started appearing around the cleats and the grab handles inside the boat, nothing major here. Ours were also covered under the 5 year hull warranty.

Do you have any pics of yours you can post up? I hope they are able to find a solution to get your fixed soon!

[WAJetboating]

Anyone else experienced this? We never hit the boat, or grounded it by the way.

Thankfully we haven't experienced it (yet), but I have HEARD of this problem. I check periodically for stress cracks around the jetdrive tunnel, and I've heard of a few owners who have added extra fiberglass and resin in that area to strengthen it against future problems.

Mercury's installation instructions for the SportJet engines recommends a hull thickness of 3/8ths of an inch. That seems awfully low to me, but it's right there in the manual. Mercury sells grommets of various sizes to accommodate different hull thicknesses but I think the thickest one is 3/8ths. Considering how high the center of mass is on that engine assembly (the engine sits "upright" which gives it a lot of mechanical moment, in turn transferring stress to the hull) I would have thought Mercury would recommend beefing up the tunnel mounting surfaces a lot more than 3/8ths. Heck, the deck mounting points for wakeboard towers are often about 3/8ths and the engine is a much more stressful load than the tower.

This doesn't seem to be a super common problem, but it would sure be awful to have it. I can't imagine how you'd "fix" it properly. "Rebuilding the whole back end" just doesn't seem feasible to me.