Matt's SUPERJET

Well I thought I might as well start a build thread of my first ski, 96 Yamaha superjet.

Before:




Mods before:

Hull:
Blowsion Tubbies

Pump & Handling:
Solas concord 13/17
Blowsion freestyle pump cone
Composite D-cut ride plate
Worx 205 intake grate
Stock pump with dual cooling
Stock reduction nozzle bored to 85mm, bilge siphon removed
Custom s/s turn nozzle

Engine:
ADA Girdled head
MSD plug caps
Speed worx pipe
Jetworks standard flow control valve
Boyseen Reeds

Other bits:
500 GPH Bilge Pump
Custom s/s battery tray
ODI lock-on grips
MB16U battery


Build plan / story:
Well it was just going to be footholds, turf, and reinforce hull and that’s it. Because riding in the surf without footholds is a bit dumb I thought. Engine was pretty good with the current mods.

So I did some research on the net to see what footholds to go with, there’s so many to choose from. I was originally going to go with adjustable or make some custom adjustable ones, but they are a bit pricey for me, so I went with WDK REV’s (Water-Dawg Kustoms) they looked pretty good and had good feedback.
Then from there one thing leads to another and my bank acc started depleting….
A few more goodies from WDK, lowered hood and nose piece.

When I put my speedworx pipe in I didn’t really know what I was doing so I was still running single cooling for engine and pipe. Pipe made a big difference to power but everything was running rather hot and things were playing up a bit, also had problems with split sparkplug caps which took us a while to figure out what was wrong until I was flushing out the ski and started to get shocks off the leads.
So replaced caps with MSD ones, tapped pump for dual cooling and I was away laughing, she never missed a beat after that.

So started striping out the ski, and had everything sitting in garage for weeks as I had lots of study to get done and ski went on hold.
Then in between study and work I just did little bits here and there and ended up pulling off the head and having a looksee and found some pretty bad scoring in the rear cylinder, i could have just given the bore a bit of a clean-up and new rings, but that’s a bit rough for me.



Because the scoring was pretty deep decided to take it up to a 718cc and got some new pro-x pistons (82mm). So while I was at that stage I thought I would port match the sleeves and do some gasket matching on the exhaust ports and manifold.
Then why not do some case porting, so split the case and had a look at crank seals and bearings, main crank bearing was a little noisy so thought I should replace it and seals just in case because I’ve got this far may as well, hate to put it back together and it shits itself.

Did some light porting on cases, I might epoxy the case so if I ever want to go more I can or I might do a bit more before I put it all back together not sure yet.



And fly cut sleeves. There looks like there’s heaps of different ways to shape these to increase bottom end or top end, I hope I haven’t taken too much and lost bottom end, should be sweet, soon find out.



Got my pro-x pistons and got the cylinders bored. The pistons looked a bit uninviting when I took them out of the box so gave them a little polish.



Engine out



New mods and plan to do:

Hull: WDK Rev footholds (all WDK products are mint, very high quality)
WDK RAZR freestyle hood with nose cone
Dakine front foot strap or front foot-hold

’’ Angle cut rear, I was keen to put some rocker in the front too, but that’s way too much work when summers just around the corner, and how far do you want to go when you could get a AM hull with all the bells and whistles that’s half the weight, so I’ll keep it simple… ish

De-foam as I have found today when pulling out exhaust tube she’s a bit waterlogged but that’s understandable for a ski of this age. So going to foam around footholds and put polystyrene blocks in bottom and add in drainage holes.
Add in tube for trim cable
Reinforce in all necessary places
External fuel fill remove


Pump and handling:
Replace all driveline bearings and seals as a few were stuffed
Shorten ride plate to match hull or where every feels good
Trim reduction nozzle bored to 85mm
X-metal trim system with custom trim ring (way lighter compared to x-metal one)
Worx 201 grate
Blueprint Stock pump (lots of work don’t really think its guna make that much of a difference myself, but some people reckon it’s the goods, at least I managed to save 20grams of weight, lol), one day get a mag pump
Lighten stock couplers (probably not the best idea as they are only cast, we’ll see how long they last, I didn’t take much out of them)
New custom s/s turn nozzle, as I need a bigger one to fit over trim ring.

Steering:
Knoxie Products pole
Shortened turn plate
Straight bars
Lowered pole bracket

Engine:
718cc 82mm pro-x, port matched, gasket matched, case porting
Lightened stock flywheel
Crank seals and bearing
Stock water box, make it bling
KP engine keepers
V-Force 2 reeds and cages
Custom Ali fuel tank with internal filler or a plastic kart tank (not sure yet)
Replace a couple of engine mounts
Most bolts will be replaced with stainless (the ones you see), heads high polished (more bling gotta make you ride better)



Paint:
Bright orange with black graphics.

High tech designing in windows paint:



Other bits:
Upgrade bilge pump (2x 500gph)
Maybe new Ali battery tray
Ratchet hood strap to keep that AM hood rock solid.
Cold fusion hood hooks
Reinforced stock hood prongs
And more stuff I’ll come up with along the way.

Got most of the engine parts and bit n pieces from Jetmaniac and turf etc from AJSP

So haven’t got very far yet since the ski has been apart for almost 6months now, just need to get study done then will be right into it.

nice build
Watch which bolts you replace with stainless on the motor as you cant get stainless bolts to the correct tourqe setting,Thats why they use plated high tensile bolts
Summers nearly here

Looking cool bro just chuck that shit together so we can hit it...

Looking good there bro. Be Sweet once that build is complete!!

Be careful of water dog kustoms. just saying!

Ok so finished all my study now, And it’s pretty much summer and want to ride.

Update on what I’ve got done so far:

Cut tray open wasn’t quite planning on cutting it open this much but if your gunna do it I say do it properly. Bit of a change in plan with the tray, going to re-foam the whole thing, carve a new wide tray out and glass over the foam.

Defoamed etc. (Dug, sawed, hacked and finally water blasted it all out)
Angle cut rear transom -3.5’’







Cut these bad-boys out for bit more space and to ensure bulkhead was going to be completely water tight
Got rid on as much of the green glue as possible and coved the fillet so I could get some nice glass in there.





Sanding nose out and inside of the external filler to try take out some weight and make it look even with the other side.



Bogged up all bond lines deck and engine bay, sanded ribs etc. & Ruffed everything up with 36grit.



Glassed around the whole hull. Two layers of cloth on engine bay sides, one on the tray sides and 3 to 4 in nose and under pole bracket etc. wrapped the glass under the hood seal lip too. (She’s pretty solid) Bogged external gas filler.





Cut some of that real-estate signage board stuff and waxed one side and taped it on and glassed from inside.





It turned out pretty good. It’s about 7mm thick.



Next the front foot hold. Originally was going to do a front foot strap but quite liked the idea of something along the lines of these:





So I made a ply box, resined the inside, poured in some two pot urethane foam, made a nice square block and started carving away a foot hold.





Ended up with that. Resined it up and that’s my mold


With the exhaust I wanted a nice flush pipe at the rear with nothing external on the transom, so I decided on an internal flange with 3 bolts so it could be done up tight, because I do not want this to leak at all, unlike the stock one.

Tapped into flange, counter-sunk outside and bogged over the screw heads.



Had to weld the flange while it was in the ski (Bit rough but will do the job), as the swaged end of the tube doesn’t fit through the bulk-head hole



Slowly getting there, shit loads still to do.

Cheers, you are correct hes not the best at emailing back but eventually about 3 and a half months later after i thought i was screwed, a big box arrived. His work is pretty mint though the hood looks really nice. There is a fair bit of mixed feedback about WDK out there.

Thanks for the heads up with the bolts I'm probably just going to do the flywheel cover and the ones you can see on my Avatar pic.

Fuuuuck man you been busy that shits looking rad! does the exhaust run down to the back above the side bond line? are ya running one or two rear foot holds? coming together nice bro keep up the build pic's.... I would say go with a foot strap over a foot hold. its harder to come out of a strap

Thanks, Nar the exhaust runs basically the same position as stock thats the position it was easiest to weld it. Yeap two rear footholds, I may to need to indent the exhaust tube a little bit to allow the foothold to fit as wide as possible. I should have probably relocated the stock hole where the tube goes through the bulkhead a little lower, but alguds.

Fuck thats cool!! mad workmanship. How come you angled the rear transom? does it just shorten it up to make it flick round abit easier?

Nice work !!!!

was just gonna say you should do that, will clear foot holds easier then.

Dude thats too much work, you are a superfreak!!!!!!! good on ya.

Sick! plenty of work involved in that bad boy! Keep it up mate

Nice work so far dude...Looking forward to seeing finished job and hearing a ride report on the shortened hull.

Awesome build man. Like good build threads with pictures and explanations!

Bro, Update this shit! Or more to the point finish it! You've got to test ride it before April!

Ok long time since an update, should really have it all finished by now. Progress has been slow but been trying to do it all nicely.
Aim now is to get it all done by the end of March so I get some time to try to learn how to ride again before http://www.nzfestivaloffreeride.com in April.
Finally finished all the glass work. Originally planned to just go with rear footholds and was trying to make up my mind between front foothold and a foot strap. Foot strap would have probably been better but after already making a mould for foot hold I decided to go with it. Also i quite liked the look of the Krash industries double foothold, even though never actually ridden a ski with them. So why not combine the two together.



Have started and now finished painting engine and aluminium parts. Thanks to the help of SI
E-line 379 paint.
Garage converted into spray booth









Yes I had planned to polish the water box which I did but polished ali goes a bit shit with salt water after a while (too high maintenance to keep nice) and paint turned out pretty good. Did the same with the speedwerx pipe painted aluminium colour (will post more pics in next update).



After fishtailing/cutting the rear of the ski for the trim I had no rear tie-down eyelet so made these and fixed them into the transom area.





Still got a bit more sanding etc. on the hull but if I pull finger should be ready for primer after the weekend.

Some pics of the fun I had with foaming the tray:











And if you are wondering why didn’t he make the footholds symmetrical / another one on otherside, hadn’t planned on doing the double foothold and I should have lowered the exhaust, but it’s all good still plenty of room and don’t really ride with my foot over those ways.

Have got some 20mm EVA foam for under the turf to make it a bit softer and some 8mm for around the holds.

Engine is pretty much ready to go back together just a few little bolts and brackets to polish.
Got some new engine mounts on the way from Dave at 701 industries, very cool having a selection of colours to choose from, got the orange ones.



Ali plate made for under pole bracket:
The waterdawg bracket didn’t quite leave enough room for the cold fusion hood hooks so had to mill a little bit off the sides of the pole bracket as i didn't want to lay into this nicely machined piece with the linisher.

Whoa ! You have gone to town on the detailing!! It's gonna look like a show boat!!! Nice work!!

The ski is now 98% finished just a few little bits to finish off.

Primer on hull



mocking up lengths for the hood-strap ratchet system



Big Thanks to big brother SI for his painting job
here he is looking happy as ever...





Helmet has a silver pearl, I was going to do the whole ski like that but too much sparkle shit would look a bit gay.
The paint used on hull is Cobra car paint with 2K clear, paint code is U49, 2012 BMW M3 fire orange, spent ages to find the right colour but super stoked, exactly what i wanted.





With the engine got a bit more aggressive with case porting but not too over the top.



Engine assembly:







Light weight flywheel installed:

Stock = 1.697kg
Lightweight = 1.345kg

Top-end:



Soaked everything in mineral two-stroke oil before assembly:



Always good to wrap a rag around so you don't have to spend 5min fishing parts out of crankcase.



High polished girdle studs installed for ADA head



V-force 2 reeds



Hull and bits



Some engine bling











Painted in bilge / engine bay - snow white







OK this was the fun part turfing the tray, I had originally bought 20mm EVA foam for under turf in the tray but there was no was i was going to get my feet into the holds. so I ended up going with 10mm for the floor and 8mm around holds / where i was likely to get sore feet, ankles etc.
Tip for anyone else doing this lower the entire tray (recess around pump) / cut bottom of footholds out and foam up tray to get the right height / suit thick under foam.
But my 10mm worked out sweet as, It is a good quality EVA foam.



Tapered out edges etc, sanding disc on 5'' works a treat just hold foam down firm.









Turfing always take your time, make paper templates, use heat gun where needed to get around foothold contours.



I was going to cut lightning bolt out and put orange turf in but was a bit pushed for time as this was the weekend before NZFOF.

20mm surf kicker shaped out



Turf finally finished



Front foothold storage hold for tow-rope and beverage refreshments....
still need to put strap handle / lock thing on.
custom Stainless hood strap fastener, with pole saver loop.



Detail of pole under-plate and my stainless surf tow loop.







Pump built and installed
Worx 201 intake grate







Had a last minute order from AJSP
RRP 50mm riser bars + extenders
Blowsion clamp
billet cold-fusion throttle

Because originally I was going to machine us some straight bars and use stock clamps with the cold fusion turn plate, i had to modify the CF turn plate to accept the Blowsion phat clamp, so now it can run everything.





Knoxie Products pole installed with high polished tubes and fasteners, Painted black ends.
These poles are Awesome, great value and work mint. Great job Knoxie.



This was a late night approx 1.30am, 3 days out from NZFOF.
Buzzing on coffee, well actually that whole week (amped of coffee) every night was late / early hours of the morning then up at 6am off to work and do it all again.



Installing engine
Dave from 701 also helped me out with some custom mounts for my speedworx pipe, Which look mint.



Copied Wamiltons bedplate washers with stainless bling ones.



KP engine keepers and 701 industries orange mounts,



Theses to install at a later date. But gonna do some mods to them first.



Plumbing everything up, and that's the tank I fabbed up it was a bit of a last mintue job but fits great around the pipe can easily get it in and out without scratching everything up and basically not being a pain in the ass. its about 14L.



Twin 500GPH Bilge pumps managed to keep the hoses as short as possible.



Managed to get it all together in the end, had a early night on the Thursday 10.30pm and then up at 3am to drive down to NZFOF. Had a run-in in the river before the event and had a good run-in in the surf too. running for 15 - 20min then cooling right down for a few hours was good for it.
anyways could barely ride the dam thing hadn't ridden a ski in over a year. Just need to spend some solid riding time on it now, get back into it.
All the hard work paid off as it won "Best overall ski" (Awesome weekend)
Big thanks to everyone who helped me getting last minute parts

Well deserved prize mate, wll done.