mxphotog

So, the install went well.

I took the boat to the lake this weekend and it preformed amazing! The only thing was the hose clamps seem to loosen up a bit after about an hour of running. So be sure to keep an eye on that. Other then that everything went well.

I highly recommend this mod to anyone with an early speedster. The boat now has much better mid range power and hookup out of the water. Before the mods the boat could barely pull a 200lb wakeboarder out of the water, now it does this easily!

Also check out Group K for their 720 speedster mods, I am running their 91 octane heads and solas props. These combined with new wear rings and carrier bearings have really brought this boat to life!!

I have a few comments I would like to add to this.

I've been piecing back together my 1997 Speedster and found this post VERY helpful, thanks everyone who contributed to it!

I purchased the WSM bearings as well and the seals are a tight fit. So DO NOT skip the step about using the epoxy to fill in the clip groove. I ended up tearing one of my seals thinking I could just be careful and avoid this step.

I live in a small town so synthetic bearing grease was not something easy to come by. Got on Amazon and found Royal Purple Synthetic Ultra Performance Grease. It has good reviews, many about how it keeps the heat down pretty well. Seems like a good fit for this application so I am gonna give it a try.

My local automotive machine shop was able to help me with a couple of things. First was I had them cut grooves into the seal carriers where the hose clamped on using a lathe. It just seemed a little easier to have the machinist do this instead of messing with a Dremel. Second, I had the machine shop use their crank shaft polisher to cleaning up the bearing and seal surface of the drive shaft. The carbon seal and boot left it a bit messy. You should probably have them do this after applying the epoxy, this way they will remove any excessive epoxy while polishing the bearing and seal surface. None of this costs much, the machinist I know there did it all for a case of beer.

Also, just buy hard wall exhaust hose, I baught what was listed as the "Seadoo part number" from SBT and what I got was a couple of pieces of standard 1-5/8 inch hard wall hose that I could have bought from West Marine online for a third of the cost.

Hitting the lake next weekend. I will have this retrofit combined with new solas impellers, new wear rings, group k head work, fresh top ends with new pistons, and rebuilt carbs. Pretty excited to see how it all turns out!