Another "Buyer Beware" Situation

[Villeneuve27]

Hey Everyone

Guess I'm just feeling the need to vent a little but here's my tale nonetheless, you may find it an interesting read. At the end of April of this year I bought a nice 1996 SeaDoo XP from a gentlemen 4 hours south of me. Paid a bit of a premium price compared to other XP's but that was because it was a freshly rebuilt motor built by a man and his son who rebuild SeaDoo's and sell many of them per year, he also stated that the carbs were rebuilt with a carb kit. Thing even came with a fresh battery and a good once over I was told. The SeaDoo was in great shape and we even spoke to a past customer who had had a great experience with the seller. It sat in the garage at my house in the city until the end of May (basically a month) where we removed the VTS and replaced with the manual HX trim, replaced the fuel lines and cleaned the fuel selector, polished and re-decaled it, new beeper, new grips and other little details. Anyways with a good background in mechanics and lots of advice we broke the SeaDoo in as perfectly as I believe was possible. Only SeaDoo synthetic oil was used, a little extra was mixed with the fuel. No high revs at all for 5 hours with little time spent at any one RPM, the SeaDoo made it to 6 hours over 3 weekends before problems happened.

First...coil problem was causing a misfire so our mechanic fixed that for us by replacing the coil - $200
Second...problem still persisted somewhat so he ordered up a stator - potentially $400
Third...before the stator arrived he did a quick compression test and noted the rear cyclinder extremely down on compression.

The mechanic we take our stuff too is as trustworthy a guy as one can hope for, he recently rebuilt our early 80's 75hp Mercury outboard and the thing is like a brand new motor, one turn of the starter and it starts up every time. He's a high performance outboard guy, he's got a great reputation on the lake so when he takes apart my XP's engine and tells me the thing was never really rebuilt, I believe him. Here's the picture dump.

As you can see the piston is quite fried, amazing SeaDoo makes these things with such a small space between the top ring and the top of the piston.

close up!

The next few pictures will show the uneven crosshatching on the cylinder walls along with the dark spots that indicate a really really bad job of honing the cylinder, if it was done it was done by hand without giving two s***s.

The oval shape and missed dark spots would cause uneven heat and friction

And the resulting damage of the ring being slammed into the head...

And the Rave's that were only 6 hours old from a fresh rebuild

Anyways I'd like to hear your thoughts along with share my story, I don't believe much more was done to this motor than the throwing in of new piston rings and a quick cylinder bore done incorrectly. Not much we can do about it really as it is a buyer beware world we live in. I did call the seller who brushed me off and I understand his reasoning to some degree, we could have abused the thing and blew it up in an hour. Still can't help but feel a little screwed though. Anyways thanks for listening, what do you think?

 

[LouDoo]

I feel for you man, but to be perfectly blunt, I'm not sure who screwed you worse, the previous owner or your current mechanic. $200.00 for a coil is a bit much, besides they hardly ever go bad, and a stator for $400.00??? It takes less than 15 mins. to replace a coil, the stator admittedly does take a bit of work.

Let this be a lesson to others, when you buy a ski assume the worse and base your price on that, if it has a "new" motor get the paper work and hopefully a warranty, and be sure the work is done by a reputable builder, like SBT. Sorry to rant but this kind of stuff pisses me off.

Lou

 

[Villeneuve27]

Sorry I didn't mention that replacing the coil wasn't all that he had to do the first time, the $200 was our total bill for new plugs, pickup and delivery to our dock and the coil replacement, still may be steep but I was ok with it if that was all it needed. The stator is my own ball park number as it hasn't been replaced due to the fact that the motor is blown.

You are correct though, ensuring that there was a good warrantee would have been a good idea, we naively thought that witnessing a compression test and trusting the rebuilder was good enough.

 

[Robj]

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. However I am not sure that a half azzed rebuild caused the problem. That piston looks kinda burned up to me. My guess is an air leak or carb problem.

 

[LittleAl]

That sucks, but. First off, there is no way that it would run even half azzed for the first six hours if the piston was that scuffed when you bought it, did you do a compression test before you bought it ? And second, your mechanic should do a compression test 1st, not third. I would bet that the missfire was due to the lack of compression, not the lack of spark.

 

[nammer]

sorry bout ur misfortune, i pretty much take it as a rule, unless u know who you are buying from, or you see proof, whatever they tell you is probably not true. I know that's a very skeptic view, and there are of course many honest people out there, but all in all, most just want to make the sale

 

[Spimothy Leary]

sorry, this is definatley a buyer beware situation, i knew where this was going when you said "premium price" "guy sells many ski's", that generally = disaster, I was SURE this was going downhill when you said that this freshly rebuilt motor still had grey fuel lines.

the coil price was high, but if it includes pickup and delivery thats very fair, your guess on the stator is high, a good used stator is $35, i just bought one three weeks ago, a regular seller was selling several like this. perhaps next time this whole ski should have been taken to your trusted mechanic right after you bought it... not right after it broke...

bottom line, you got taken by a professional craigslist guy doing the dupont overhaul on ski's for profit, and took it up the azz.

the last ski I bought for personal use was a 96xp, i bought it out of the back of a pickup truck, no test ride, 150 compression, i did THAT before I even reached for my wallet. took it back to the shop and stripped it completely apart, the entire inside of the engine was filled with dirty, sandy, oily, disgusting, slimey gunk, the ski would have had a complete meltdown within the first 20 minutes of a test ride.

since this is not my first rodeo, I assumed this was the case.... which is why the ski was stripped to the bone and no harm was done. unfortunately in your case you got taken. But possibly your story will help the next guy to not make the same mistake.

as far as calling the previous owner who brushed you off,,, TRUST ME, he's brushed off about 30% of his customers, and the other 70% don't bother calling, he's been screwing guys like you forever, and he'll keep screwing guys over and over and over.