
I have this 99 Tigershark I purchased as a package deal. It has the Suzuki 640 engine. I knew the owner (Rick) that owned prior to the fellow I bought it off of, When Rick owned it last summer he was telling me he was driving it but that it had low compression in one cylinder. So I was just out poking around outside today and was having a look at it and I noticed that the cylinder cover in the PTO side has what I would refer to as spatter on it, almost similar to what spatter from a flux core welder looks like, when you really zoom in on the photo though it starts to look more like damage from pieces of metal hitting it. The top of the piston looks similar although not as bad . What do you guys think is going on in this situation? I’m thinking 1 of 2 a scenarios 1. Something has broken like a ring or a needle bearing or something was dropped into the case? Anyways some type of actual metal which has caused this damage to the piston and cylinder cover or scenario 2. The PTO cylinder has been ran lean and it’s chunks of molten metal? I’m pretty green to working on engines so don’t have enough experience to make the proper determination. Either way, if I decide to try and get it running and that’s an if, I’m thinking take the cylinders off, manually rotate the connecting rods to see if the crank rotated smoothly, it rotates smoothly now,. Measure the cylinder bores to see where I’m at, ( Oddly the cylinder bores look good, no scratches at all, no lip at the top of the bore, however I can’t seem to see any cross hatch ) If In spec, home them and install new pistons, if out of spec, have them bored and honed proper size for ne t size of piston. Do a leak down test on the motor to see if crank seals are leaking, rebuild the carburetor. Again I’m not sure at all that I want to put the time and effort into getting this running as I don’t love them the way I do seadoo’s although I do believe those 640 Suzuki engines are good engines. I have another Tigershark with a 640 that quits after about 40 minutes of riding and I’m thinking that could be the coil so I may just try the coil off this one for my running 640. Would this 640 be a reed engine? At least it’s something to talk about. WHAT DO YOU THINK?