jet boat opinions 1996 seadoo

Just wondering what you guys thought about jet boats? I'm looking at a 1996 seadoo speedster. are the engines dependable? or do they usually have a lot of problems? I also heard that upkeep is a little cheaper (don't know if it's true).
here is the one I'm looking at http://grandrapids.craigslist.org/boa/339608097.html

thanks,
Matt

Re: jet boat opinions 1996 seadoo

for a 12 year old boat with shot upolstery, the price is high. you will outgrow the size of the boat very quickly, there's BLING, but no space to move around. with the price of gas i would consider a propped boat. because with a jet drive, you loose 30-40% of the horsepower, in the conversion to the jet output, verses the output by a propped engine. in other words it's a 16 ft boat with 150hp jet drive which equates to a 16 ft boat, with a 115 outboard. plus when the jet drive needs service it's expensive. i have 3 pwcs, and know the upkeep of a jet drive.

Re: jet boat opinions 1996 seadoo

are the engines reliable though? or do they constantly need maintenance.

Re: jet boat opinions 1996 seadoo

Looks like the listing is already deleted. Didya buy it? Around here, you rarely see any of those little jet boats anymore...like TD said, they're gas hogs for the performance you get out of em, and prices usually reflect that. I see several for sale around here every year but they owners are having a lot of trouble dumping them.

Those SeaDoo boats have pretty decent engines in em. It's the same basic Rotax two-cycles that are used in their PWCs and snowmobiles. What cc is this one? twin or triple? Like most of the PWC type engines, both the 2 and 3 cyl Rotaxs are pretty bulletproof as long as the carbs are synced and jetted for your altitude. It's gonna be working pretty hard pushing a boat hull around instead of just a PWC hull. Do a compression test on it before ya buy it.

A sled engine rebuild can cost about as much as an outboard powerhead rebuild. You'll probably spend most of your maintainence on the jet drive though...

Re: jet boat opinions 1996 seadoo

the engine is like any used engine, boat car pwc, it's how it was maintained. it may run great on the test run, and crap out next week.