Finding a leak in 96XP

[D 5UPE]

Tell Tail

You have a pipe what I call a tell tail mid way up the ski below your rubber side trims.
If this is the hose your talking about.
It should be conected to the side of the hull.
It lets you know water is being circulated through the motor and exhaust.
That may be the loose hose you mentioned earlier.
Just conect it to the hull outlet.

 

[D 5UPE]

Forget about my last post.
Sorry you said it was a clear pipe.

You should have 2 bilge pipes. And there clear pipes.
Or maybe someones had an electric bilge in there and removed it, before you bought it.

 

[scooper77515]

Back to the bilges...

I have run water through them both and they appear to be unobstructed (at least they are now, not sure about before I blew them out).

BUT, I have water coming out at the plastic ELLs at the top. There is a small hole in the ELLs on the side that appears to be there on purpose. But, it seems to me that a hole at the top of a vacuum system would simply draw in air and not pull up the water, so I am going to put a dab of silicone on them and see if they pull a better vacuum when I test drive it today. I can always pull the silicone off if it messes up.

Why the hole at the top?

Bilge system appears to be tight except for these little holes...

 

[scooper77515]

Without starting another thread, how do I get the styrofoam out from beside the engine so I can check where the two halves of the hull come together for a leak?

I thought I was going to look under the rubber "bumper" on the outside, but it appears to be riveted on and I don't want to mess with that.

Once I get the foam out on the left side, I am pretty sure I will see where the water is coming in from (I can hear it coming in when I put weight on that side and sink it under water over the edge of the foot railing).

 

[scooper77515]

Well, I think I found my "leak"

I took the ski out today and rode it maybe 20 minutes and got 2-3" water inside. So I took it out of the water and drained it, put it back in and pulled one of the bailers out and pulled it off the hose, left the seat out, and rode it while putting my finger over the hole. It was pulling a slight vacuum, probably not enough to pull water. But the bad thing was that when I let off the throttle, about a cup of water came shooting back in through the tube.

So I plugged both bailer hoses and rode it another hour and picked up hardly an inch of water, if that.

So, is there supposed to be a check valve in these things or is there something else wrong with my system?

 

[seadoosnipe]

Bailer tubes!

In the exploded view of your tubes, I don't see any type of check valve, which doesn't say you can't put one in.
Did you look at the venturi nozzles in the pump casing's upper section to see that they were clear? If they are working well, you should have a pretty good vacuum at higher rpm.

 

[Wheels & Waves]

Check this again.

Looks like you have covered most of the bases on this. There is one other place you could check. Make sure your siphon tubes are still in the venturi of the pump. If either of the tubes are gone, you can get water forced back into the ski. The tubes are designed to place the bilge system in the highest area of negative pressure of the pump. Without them, the pump can actually push water back into the hull. As far as the bilge o-rings, if you can see them pinched out of the edge of the pump, replace them. Also check that the bilge hoses on the inside of the hull are routed up under the seat mount post and then back down to the bilge pickups. This acts as an air gap in the system.

You need to make sure that there are 2 tubes still in the venturi for the bilge system. At low RPM, water will go back into the hull if they are NOT there. Here is a diagram of the tubes. They are number 23 in the fisch.

 

[scooper77515]

I can see those tubes in there. Water comes out of them when I squirt it into the pickups so I am assuming they work.

I might be replacing the wear ring and may just replace all the parts for the bailer system while I am at it. Hopefully, something obviously wrong will show up while I am disassembling it.