kwits x2 freestyle ski build up

[Kwit]

I posted this orginally over at pwctoday but I figured what the hell I might as well get it over here too.

ok ok im 19 i have no job right now and i just swapped out my motor in my civic and i have absolutly no money. lets see how far i can get with this thing. I have no real experience with stand up jet skis. when i was like 10 my dad bought a 97 1100stx kawasaki. got me hooked on it. but when i was out riding i saw people standing up and doin crazy things i could never begin to try with my couch. So a few months ago i bought a 650sx from a member on this board. long story short thing was scrap in one month flat. so then i traded what was left and 350 bucks for a 89 x2. First thoughts about the ski is that its slow! but i liked the looks people gave me when i subbed it and the feeling i got when i got huge air. After 3 weeks this motor reads 60/155 in the cylinders and its time to do a rebuild. I figured I do a few mods for some more out of the hole and make it egile for freestyle tricks. Again having no money this will be interesting. The mods ill be trying to include on this build are as fallows

planed mods:
stock milled head for 170 comp
some kind of pipe/stock pipe mod maybe tho
new rings and pistons with a fresh bore/hone
pump cone mod
maybe bore nozzle
hood intake mod
d cut ride plate
650sx pump
15 impellar
maybe a little paint while see..
40mm carb with moded stock intake mani
some port matching
west coast grate

nice little list for a kid with no money/job. Its gunna be interesting...

ok this is what im starting with:

[Kwit]

ive already bought moose bars for a better feel and my mom reapolsterd the seat with black marine vynl. The bars are self expanitory but the seat was actually pretty difficult due to the x2s seat bends. The vynl was 6.99 a yard. one yard covers the seat perfectly. The bars are low rise moose atv bars. I like the feel of the lower bars becuase i feel that i can get a better pull for air and subs. they were 19 bucks. i paid for these by taking back my dads beer cans lol ill be attatching dakine foot straps on this ski also. Also id like to say if anyone has any ideas with any of the things i do on this ski lemme know thats what im looking for.constructive criticisim.

alright so i pulled out the tank and got the motor out. i cut all the wireing i plan on installing plugs in the wires to make the motor plug and play for later use.

[Kwit]

currently im stuck with this motor. The cylinder will not budget off the bottom end. Ive beat this thing to a plup with a rubber mallet and sprayed absene amounts of liquid tourch on every part of it and still nothing. I had a 3 foot crowbar in the pry points on the motor and still nothing. The pistons move freely so the motor is not seized. I can not for the he!! of it get this cylinder off. I think at one time the head gasket blew or sumthin and water got down the part of the cylinder where the head bolts are and corroded itself together. Ill try tourching it a little tomorrow and see if that helps at all if not itll go to the dealer or a machine shop to be removed. Something was bouncing around in there the top end in the low cylinder as well. looks like a piece of a ring broke off in there.

[Kwit]

well tonight after reading a reply to one of my posts I decided to try my hand at fabing up a freestyle cone to save that 50 bucks (srry wetwolf). Crab gave me an idea to actually just make my own out of my stock cone. I looked at Bruces 650 freestyle pump cone design and decided to try to make my own stubby cone. I saw a homade cone that Crab made himself but it looked quite bigger then the ones I saw on wet wolfs web site so I trimmed mine up a little more. I did most the molding with bondo and plan to go over it with a nice thick layer of jb weld. Ill coat the inside and outside of the cone where the bondo is present. Im pretty confident that it will be plenty strong enough. I just have to fine sand it more tomorrow before I coat it with the liquid weld. I cut the stock cone one inch off the bottom and started with that. I then used aluminum foil to make a cone shape inside the part that I cut off. Next I just plopped on a bunch of bondo. kinda looked like a little cup cake lol. I cut alot of the bondo away with a razor before it got to hard. Its not done yet I plan on making it abit smaller then this but its 2:00am. Still quite a bit of sanding left to do. I have to sand it down passed where I want it so the jb can go on nice and thick.

I also plan to bore out my stock plastic turning nozzle with a rolling pin wrapped in sand paper and see how that comes out. I have more then one nozzle laying around here and ill prolly need um too lol . Ill also be D cutting my ride plate so we will see how this all turns out when its put together. Hopefully my concoctions will work out for the best. woot woot

[Kwit]

My x2 is an 89 and in 89 for some reason they made x2s with poorer steering componets when compared to the other year models of x2s. I dont feel like im stuck with what so many clam is an "inferior" model though. Instead ive sought out to try and gain a little more umph and squirlyness out of the ski by D cutting the ride plate.

Ive seen a few posts by various people having cut there ride plates and saw no bad reviews so I decided to give it a go. I saw how a few people did theres but now one really explained the dimentions of the cut. One post explained however that the blowsion plate left an inch of flat on both sides of the cut. I sought to try and counter act my skis poor turning cababilites by hacking off an adittional half inch. I used a 6 inch lawnmower wheel that was hanging in my garage. This worked perfectly on the stock plate leaving half inch of flat plate on both ends evenly. To make the cut I first used a circular drill saw bit to make 2 holes right next to each other and then cut the remaining pieces with a sawsall. after that I hit the edge with a light fileing. This mod was done before my ski sh*t the bed and I thought the results were awsome. The ski has a lot more restlessness to it now. Im sure with a pump cone and a light nozzle bore ill be able to get this thing whippin around pretty good.

[Kwit]

The steering system you have is the same as the one I use. You just need to legnthen the arm out to get maximum throw on the cable. Mise is so long it just misses the side of the hull. You will have to remover the hull support which is not need in freshwater or add another hull support from the left but tweak it a little to fit the right side and you will have lots of clearance. The quick steer arm can't be perfectly straight though. It will need to come back a little as well as out to keep the steering relatively close to centered. If you come straight out you will only turn one way a lot.

The best thing you can do for freestyling is chop the tail down a little less than an inch. It will make the nose way lighter feeling for jumping and doing subs. Just leave like a quarter inch of the flat area at the end of the floorboard and you will never delaminate it.

Make a quick up trim system with $12 worht of bicycle parts out of your old trim system. It will give you a lot of trick to do in the lake.

[Kwit]

Today I decided that I was goin to make a trim setup similar to petes while I make up my mind on what im goin to do with this motor. I found an old bmx bike that I had rusting in the weeds from a few years back so I thought id hack it up a lil bit and get this trim lever started. Unscrewing the pillips head screws that hold the shrouds on were fun to say the least. I had to cut a slot in the screws to get a huge flathead in there to get them out. That was a sh*tty design if I ever seen one. Finally pulled them off and started to take apart the trim mechanism itself and lost one of the ball bearings in the grass. For anyone that has done this trim mod before I have 2 questions. One did you use the ball bearings in your setup? and has anyone ever tryd to cut back the stops a little bit to get a little more tilt out of it?

Two other things I plan on doin areputting a bolt threw the stock handle bar tilt. Mine has a little wobble in it and its very annoying. Another thing Id like to do is reform and remold the left side plastic shroud to be able to reinstall
the stock dash and make it look halfway decent. I wouldnt like that huge hole where the stock trim adjustment knob went and were the handle bar tilt knob slot is. Will I need this slot for an aftermarket steering system?

[Kwit]

one thing about the x2 that bothers me to death is the stock handlebar adjustment system. Sence I plan on using this machine to jump a few wakes and barrelroll attmpts, its only right that the steering should be nice and tight. The stock adjustment was a nice idea but had way to much wiggle and wobble in it. To get rid of this I cut off the bracket that supports the adjusting knob. I then drilled a hold threw the middle setting dimple on the other side of the mechanism and put a bolt threw it. This worked really well and took all the wiggle wobble out of the stock setup. Now I wont be able to adjust my bar position but I never moved it from the center most upright position anyway so now atleast I have no wiggle.

while planning out my nozzle position before and after my lever was depressed I noticed that the nozzle would hit the rubber cap on the back of the hull so I removed it. The nozzle gain a little movement after the cap was taken off but it still could have gone more. Not wanting to hack off an inch off the back of the hull like pete suggests, I decided that what I would do is D cut the hull to allow the nozzle to partrude through it a little bit.

I got the whole trim lever mechanism all hooked up but it got dark out so ill take pics tomorrow.

[Kwit]

last night I finished the nozzle lever mod for my x2. It came out pretty good I think. I adjusted the lever so that it would be in nuetral until I pull the lever then it goes to 3up . Ive never riding an x2 with this mod and pete tells me that the nozzle is supossed to be repositioned by thrust after the lever is pulled. We shall see...

[Lakeman]

Cool:dunno: I always wanted to try a x2.:bananapowerslide: :bananapowerslide:

[crab]

Once you learn to turn on the back of the ski with the nose up, you won't go back. And where is the tank picture?

[D Slicker]

They are addictive

[crab]

They are addictiveYou know better than anyone, tearing apart a perfectly good SXR for the drivetrain....nice.

[D Slicker]

You know better than anyone, tearing apart a perfectly good SXR for the drivetrain....nice.

Its got to be the drugs. :haha: :haha: or maybee lack of.

[crab]

Its got to be the drugs. :haha: :haha: or maybee lack of.:hititbanana:
lol

[Kwit]

I didnt really get to much done to the ski today just a few little things. One little modification I made was to the trim mechanism. Ive wondered how the nozzle was going to reposition itself in the neutral position after the lever was depressed. Mr. Jacobs had told me that the thrust from the pump would return the nozzle to its original position, but I still wanted to make sure. Digging through some misc parts I came across an old spring kit for my civics rear drum brake that had a few various springs in there. One of these springs was incorperated to the mechanism.

Another thing I did was further moddify the stock steering. Mr Jacobs also suggested to me to extend the cable steering arm and bring it back a little bit to extend the distince that the arm pulls the cable and to make the nozzle centered while the bars where straight. However in order to do this the support frame inside the hull would have to be taken out or notched messing with the structural durablity of the ski. This doesnt go over well with me as I plan on beating this ski like a punching bag. So what I decided to do was drop the ball joint down a little bit with 2 washers and cut back the stops back alittle bit to make the arm able to move the cable back and forth a greater distance. Putting the washers in helped keep it from binding up. With only removing very small amounts from the steering arm stops I was able to achive great results. Only taking off maybe 1/8th of an inch off each steering stop I was able to gain almost 1/2 an inch of nozzle movment in the back. Tomorrow I might cut the stops back a little more and tune the steering so that everything is insync. If any one has a stock cage model x2 steering system id like the measurement of the nozzle/hull clearence of a full turn. This is the distance of how close the nozzle gets to the inside wall of the ski in a full turn. That would be very helpful id like to atleast achive this distance to show that the cable steering x2s can easily be made equal to the squirl cage steering x2s.

[Kwit]

its taking me a little while to do this I origanally posted this over at pwctoday so its just a matter of resaving the pics and copy and pasting... but its tedious

[Kwit]

Ive been working on the x2s freestyle hood late at night and in between everything else. My hood is very simple and hopefully effective at keeping more water out of my hull then the stock funnel of a hood. All I did for my hood so far is foam and bondo the stock intake and the 2 side drains. I plan on inserting a flexy vacum type hose threw the stock hood foam from up by where the steering system is. This is the same general place that fletch got the air for his hood from. Ill use one 2'' plastic flexy pipe from the top to the bottom of the hull so that water doesnt start to syphan into the ski if it gets tipped over. Also I plan on leaving the 2 backfire ports on the hood becuase I dont think riding a small bomb will be to much fun and not much water if any gets threw there. I plan on useing as much of the stock hood foam as possible.

[Kwit]

Today I worked a little more on getting the cable steering up to par with the squrill cage one and success!! All that had to be done was a little modification in the turning nozzle to allow it to actually turn enough. I also improved the trim while I was at it by removing a small half disc piece of plastic on the nozzle that restricted the upward motion of the nozzle. Finally ive proved that the cable steering system can be just as good as the cage type steering with a little modiftication

[Kwit]

Afew more pics of the the success

[Kwit]

Alright I was fed up with this damn motor. I hooked it up to an engine hoist and chained her down and give her a go. Applying more then 1 1/2 tons!!! this thing did not budge. After this not budging I decided to take a burnsomatic to it with combo of a 3 foot crow bar and still nothin. Only until I I beat this thing with a rubber malet did I get anywhere. over 2 tons was applied to this!!! finally after an hour adn a half I seperated the two. All this after days and days of soaking it with penatrating oil. I was seriously begining to think that someone either welded or used a jb weld or glue on this thing. So much pressure was put on this that the engine plate bent.

[Kwit]

Alright I Figured id show you guys what im gettin into around here. The piston looks like it would have scored up the cylinder pretty good but actually it didnt really do anything to it. The bolts on this motor are very badly corroded. I plan on building a 650 up fromm the bottom but the more i dig into this motor im not so sure that this is the one ill be building lol. I slightly bent the cylinder from wacking it with a rubber mallet so hard so ill need a new one of those. The crank needs and new bearing. I pulled off the side cover for the flywheel and the seal was broken causing a little rust to start forming inside the case there. Not sure if this is a presserized part of the motor causing it to run at a slightly leaner condition?

[Kwit]

I got my dakine foot straps today and damn these things are beastly! heavy duty for sure. Im gunna epoxy a stainless steal peice to the hull and screw the straps into that whell see if it holds.

[Kwit]

Ok today I finally got to work on the ski a little bit. I started scraping off some of the sickers and ripping up some of the turf that was on there so I can get this thing sanded down soon. I took all the componets off the steering deck and all the rubber pieces in the front and rear of the ski. When I took off the exhaust oulet I noticed the diameter of the outlet was smaller then my wc pipe end. Would anything be gained by making this hole bigger on the outlet?

Im getting it all ready to be sanded down and painted. Im thinking im gunna use spray paint it with a **** load of clear coat and primer. I cant really decided what color to paint this thing im teatering between red like petes old red dragon or white with gray and black acsents. The west coast stuff will all be painted blue along with the electric box and ride plate. whell see im goin to sand it down real good and put 4-5 coats of primer and 5-6 coats of clear coat over my paint and my decals.

Im giving in and building this thing up with a ton of parts because I have a good job now and im a parts addict. ill be useing many west coast parts as I can find. On the subject of west coast, I was told that they only made a manifold for the 44mm carb. Is this true? and if so who makes a performance aftermarket intake manifold for the 40 mm carb, or am I just gunna have to port the stocker?

[Kwit]

damn this turf glue~! Ive been trying to get this turf off for like 2 days. Ive been sanding this thing down after ive been getting out of work for like 3 days and its getting there. Tomorrow ill finish up the top part of the hull and get the hood all squared away with the holes ive filled in. Im probley goin to paint it white while see when its time though. Im hoping I can remember where every little part goes when it comes time to put it back together theres so many of them. Im shooting to have this thing painted by the end of next week.

[Kwit]

here is a few pics of some of the stuff ive been gathering. Today im gunna get the nicks and deeep scraps outnof the bottom of the hull with some marine tex putty. Hopefully ill get the top all finished sanded down with the heavey paper and move on to some less abrasive stuff. while see.

VERY interested in that accusteer! i sent them an email but no respons yet. 125 bucks!? you stole it!

[h2odesperado]

once you gett this done we shall ride iron bay next year. deal??

[Kwit]

sounds good.. always looking for people locally to ride with. I sent you a pm a while ago but never heard back. Not really sure where iron bay is but sounds good... do you know where duran is? i ride over there and luanch over by the bay bridge.

[h2odesperado]

irondequoit bay. yeah i was a little unclear. next summer, we can ride squares. a pair o square.

[Kwit]

sounds good I also have a 550 and a stx100 couch. we should get a few pplz together and ski duran beach