OK, first off; Holy mother of God does this thing scream across the water. 45mph at 6800 rpm. 6' rooster tail 60' back with the trim up.
Now that that's taken care of;
I had the carb hoses routed wrong and reset the low speed adjust to factory spec and it started fine and ran great. We got hail and storms sideways all afternoon and finally around 6:30 it cleared off and I hooked and booked to the river solo with three rods and a prayer. Called my uncle on the way and picked him up (to help paddle if something bad happened again). Got to the river, millpond smooth and an air boat was playing around the ramp.
Found out that the motor at 1500rpm has too much thrust to push the boat out and turn it around so I need to make or buy a reverse setup to retro into this thing (thinking make). Shut it down, flipped it end for end (paddle again) and started it back up and off we went. Uncle was sitting in the front seat on the floor and it worke dout because I can see right over his head while running the boat. 4500rpm at part throttle and the boat planed out nice but with the trim down so it would steer it was backwashing a lot of water over the stern (Why Seadoo didn't do a better nozzle design is beyond me). Trimmed it up some and whacked the throttle to the stops, instant accelleration to 6800rpm and 40mph on the Lowrance transom mounted paddle wheel. Trimmed it some more and we were up to 45mph, rock solid, no cavitation until we blew through the air boats wake and it hit the limiter four times in a second or so. Looked back and the expansion chamber was trying to fall off the exhaust manifold and cooling water was going everywhere so I shut it down and bolted everything back together.
Fired it back up and off we went again. Only real problem I had was getting the pump to load when I first started it, had to walk back on the rear deck so the rpm's would drop from 3k to 1500 before going anywhere. Nicest thing is the Seadoo is self baling so it sucked a good bit of the water back out as we motored the rest of the way up river.
Caught a couple decent fiesty bass and relaxed for an hour or so before taking it home. Burned about two gallons of fuel running up and back.
It feels good to have it turn out so well. No pics, you'll have to wait for more sun.
Jamie