Hey everyone. I've recently departed from the conventional and am heading toward the awesome, but I might need some help getting there. I have a small 15' Seadoo Challenger, the old ones with the single rotax 787 110hp engine. That motor has blown up on me 4 times now and I'll be damned if I'm going to rebuild it AGAIN! It's great in a jet ski, but just too much smoke, consumption, noise, and trouble without the power or reliability. So I've ripped out that motor and all it's electrical systems.
This winter, I picked up a 2003 Seadoo GTX with a 1500cc supercharged 3-cyl 4-stroke motor making 185hp. It's set up for closed circuit cooling and runs like a top. My challenge is I have to make this bigger new motor fit where the old one used to be. In order to do this, I'm going to have to cut out AT LEAST the intake tunnel and glass in the one from the jet ski. The main reason for this is the thru-hull fitting is not high enough for the new driveshaft to come through. The new engine is too tall, even with the oilpan sitting on the hull.
This presents me with all sorts of questions, like do I glass in the whole half of the jet ski's bottom and change my hull dynamics, do I glass in just the tunnel and then build little pedestals for the engine to sit on, how do I put on a ride-plate? Do I even NEED a ride plate?
I'm using an old Seadoo XP hull to mock this up, as it has nearly identical dimensions as the boat. Here's what I have so far:
