A few questions about a 98 Sportster 1800

[Jeff W]

Hey guys, been reading this forum for a few months. Lost of good info.

Anyway I bought a 98 Sportster 1800 with dual 717's a few months ago. Motors ran great, everything else not so much. When I got the boat it was cavitating badly, wouldn't pull more than a few people up to plane. Went to replace both carbon seals and low and behold there were no seals between the jet pumps and the hull... Now it works better. Wear rings look good, impellers in good shape. With that said the throttles were bad out of adjustment. I currently have them even, before that I could only get about 5800 rpm out of 1 and around 6000 out of the other. Now I get 6800 rpm from both and a top speed on gps with 1 person of 43-44 MPH. First boat so I don't know if that's normal.

My question is how much dead space is in the throttle levers before the motors start to rev up? When I got the boat one motor idled at 1000, the other at 700, got that fixed. Before I adjusted the throttles I had to move the throttle levers a little over half way before they would rev up. Now its still over 1/4 and the boat maxes out at 6800 RPM. Is there still room to tighten up the cables?

One more question. We had it out yesterday and the shifter had started getting stiff going from neutral to forward. My dad was pulling it up onto the trailer and the shifter let go and now freely moves. I'm assuming the cable snapped but haven't had a chance to dig into it. We want to go out again Sunday and I am going out of town till Thursday and wont be able to look. Would it be a good idea to go on and order another cable?

Thanks a lot for all the info on this forum. This boat has started to turn into a restoration and I wouldn't have gotten this far without it.

 

[howie099]

Very stiff reverse cable usually means it is going and now if it moves real easy it more tank likely broke. You can get them from SBT you will tell the difference when you hook up the new one. My throttle levers start to kick in with very little movement. It is up to you on when they kick in as long as you get full speed. My levers never line up perfect it will always very depending on the load and how rough the water is. That is why they give 2 levers and not one

I never GPS'd mine but I don't think I ever had the speedo much over 50 so I know with GPS it will be lower but in the 40's is about right. I think the challenger 1800 gets about 5MPH more than the Sportster 1800.

I have had my boat with 5-7 people all the time and I have to issues with it. It does goes slower with more people but it gets on the plane fine. You just have to balance the weight

The boats never came with the seals between the pumps and hull. I added them also when I took off the pumps but they don't come with them from the factory.