Oh yea...as for the oil plug on the side of the engine...what type of oil goes in and does anyone have any idea how much? My last concern is that I believe some of this oil was sitting in the piston rod wells when I took it apart. If this well is supposed to be dry (like I have heard from someone?) then I guess I could have a leak. It does also seem to me that there was an unusual amount of oil that I had to swab out of the body of the ski. I had cleaned it out before when I repaired a big hole one time but the oil was still pooling in the bottom of the ski. I guess I never really thought much of it thinking it was just oil from the injection. Hind-sight it was probably leaking from the engine.

I might as well explain that hole repair here since I didn't find much on how to do it when I was in need:

The neighbor who sold me the jet ski was using it and it threw a bearing that must be associated with the prop shaft. This allowed the prop shaft to shake around freely till it quickly broke apart the hull of the boat where the prop shaft runs through the back of the boat (see picture). The metal housing plate that creates a watertight seal mounted near the rear where the shaft exits (just past the rubber boot on the shaft) had broke free of the gob of glue-like material holding it in place. I had to take a rotozip type tool, box knife, screw driver and pretty much every other tool with a tip on it and work all of that gob free. It was pretty tough stuff. Once the metal housing bracket was free to move around the shaft a bit to the left and right I took that Liquid Gasket stuff (yes…I found a use for it ha!) and seated the metal housing. Once this had a chance to dry I took a full tube of liquid nails and made my own gob pattern over the top of the metal housing in the shape of a capital “I”. Once this is nice and dry…it doesn’t have much interest in flexing so it in effect holds the metal fitting down as a back up to the liquid gasket. While there is not a ton of pressure down under there…I didn’t want it popping up to let water in when I am in the middle of the lake. Anyway, this seal has worked VERY well at a cost of $18.00 total for the new goop. Attached is a technical specs photo that would make an artist weep. I hope this helps someone in a random Google search some day.

 

Found a picture of the cylinder wall

 

I just went out to the garage to see if my ski put itself back together over the last 3 weeks or so and it in fact did not. Bummer.

I wanted to take some close-up photos of the cylinder and it looks like there may be some rust forming in the scratched up cylinder wall scratches. I live in Houston where it is unacceptably humid. Am I supposed to have this thing all lubed up with something while it sits waiting to be tended to? If so..what do I lube it with and how do I address the small amount of collected rust appearing?

Lastly, in the photo showing the tops of all of the cylinders it looks very much like there is a sleve on each of the 3 cylinders. After watching all sorts of videos, reading y'all's info etc I sort of figured that this cylinder block would be just a solid piece of machined steel. Would it be normal for Kawasaki to have sleeved these cylinders when this 2002 was new or is it more likely that this machine has previously been bored out and sleeved?

IF these are in fact the sleeves that many people talk about, is it more likely that I will just need to go to a machine shop and have them heat this one up to remove it and then pop in another nice slick one?

Thanks!

 

The intereior of a motor is horribly susceptable to surface rust, keep it dry and you should be able to buff out the spots by hand. The cylinders themselves do look different due to the molding and machining process, it looks like a sleeve but its actually just how they built the block. Your local machine shop should be able to tell the difference if you need them to take a look.

After you have gone this deep you do not want to worry about whether or not you will have compression when its done so make sure you get the walls honed out. Its just a simple resurfacing that allows the new rings to seat properly, and will smooth out some of the scratches. If the scratches are too deep you will need to get it bored out, again your machine shop can help decide. Honing takes about 5 minutes if you let the experts do it and it shouldnt cost much. They just use a brush with stones on the bristles hooked on to a power drill, nothing too serious, but there is a technique to it.

Also if you want to go all out you can get the block acid dipped. It will remove all of the crap inside the oil and water channels inside the block and makes it look nice and shiny too.

I know nothing about your oil, the manual should be able to help out on that. And the new gaskets on the rebuild should take care of any leaks.

Make sure you clean out the gas tank and the carbs, its an easy job. Also check the fuel filler neck if you have one, I had crap in my tank on my boat once and turned out the rubber in the neck was breaking down so every time I fueled up it just put more crap in the tank.

Think I covered everything, good luck to ya!

 

That should about do it. I'm going to take it in to the machine shop this weekend (hopefully) and will have them identify what the heck I have here. The local Kawasaki shop recommended me just trying to hone it myself by buying the stuff at Harbor Freight Tools but this sounds a bit more technique oriented than just shoving a drill attachment down there by what you say.

The shop also said to just spray all of the cylinder surfaces with WD40 to keep them from rusting but a guy at work said there is a red oil that I should coat all of the internal parts and temporarily removed bearings with.

I need to order some parts before this sits in my garage for another month.

 

According to the sales rep at SBT, she said that this particular model does come sleeved from the manufacturer. At least that clears that part up. Called the local machine shop that does jet ski bores and honing...he said it would be roughly $45 to hone the cylinder. Damn...and I would think that stuff would be more expensive. I'll pay that bill any day! To the machine shop we go.

 

Its my understanding that its not really a sleeve per say, but simply a separate part used to make the molding process simpler. Instead of molding the cylinder walls into the block they simply mold the block with three big holes in it then press in the cylinders later, makes life easier and cheaper and you dont have to worry about imperfections in the mold causeing a failure.

Honing is really quick, cheap, and easy, a deadly combination. If you want to do it yourself(Why not your learning anyway) you can look up the recomended technique, I beleive the idea is to cross hatch the scouring by spinning one way down the cylinder then the opposite direction back up, but I've never done it, it was included in my acid bath so I didnt have to worry. However having them do it would give you the chance of having them look at te scratches to see if the walls are salvageable without boring.

 

Found a local machine shop about 5 miles away open till 6pm. Wish me luck ha!

 

Good luck!

 

Okay, first the bad news.

The machinist ran his finger around the inside of the middle cylinder and immediately said Oh Oh. He said it could not be honed but that it may be possible to bore and oversize the piston/s. I asked him if it had to be all 3 and his reply was that if I was just going to run it a couple times a year then that doing just the one might work fine but if I was going to be keeping it and running it hard a couple times a month that I should just do all 3 oversized and bored. He also said that I should find out exactly what size the replacement oversized pistons will be, let him bore it to within 3/100’s (or whatever makes sense here…3/1000’s etc…) and then he will be able to tell if the bore of the sleeve will survive before I have to buy the pistons (so as to not waste my money on new pistons first). Then if they hold up he would just hone it out to the right finished size. I believe he quoted around $70 for each bore if I remember correctly. $210.00 to $250.00 total but will have to check. Then there is the cost of the top end kit with 3 pistons (About $400 with shipping) so I’m already at $650.


SBT has a remanufactured “top end cylinder exchange kit” that includes cylinders, all new SBT pistons, rings, wrist pins, c-clips, base gaskets, head/head cover gaskets/o-rings, intake and exhaust gaskets for $595 plus 2 way shipping (about $100.00.) So for $50 more bucks I don’t have to guess and end up with a 1 year warranty on those parts I believe. Suggestions?

Now for the good news:

I tore apart my first carb tonight. The 900 STS has a Tripple carb (if that is different than most) so I started with the most probable culprit. There was a bunch of junk under the round cap (the back side of the carb where there are some gaskets and a long pin thingy and a big rubber “CV boot looking thing”. I cleaned out all 3 of the carbs on this side and everything looked fine except for on the CV boot looking thing there is a TINY little hole on the outside edge that looks like it allows for a tiny amount of air to get to the back side of the boot. One of the 3 had a clog in this tiny hole so I stuck a pin in it to see daylight through it again. Done.

Then I went to the fuel side of the carb and opened all 3 of the dishes where the fuel and oil must make their journey into the carb. There was my answer all along. The 2 outside carbs had a nice murky oil/gas mixture in them and the middle one had nice clear gas ONLY. This is what I and or someone else suspected all along as the culprit. It appears very much so that the middle carb was not getting oil to it to mix with the gas (Hence my plan to always mix my own gas from now on). I looked things over and explored the carb to see what it was all about and put them back together. Gentlemen…I believe I have my problem diagnosed.

Just need to order the carb rebuild kit and choose on the piston issue and we are done here!