Flipping couches for fun and profit

OK, so today I sold the supercharged GTX as a project with the (mostly parted) '02 GTX that still had a good engine. Still managed to OVER triple my investment on that and somebody will be able to put a nice ski together for 1/2 price.
I also went ahead anf finished ths GTX DI I've had for 2 years. Customer GAVE it to me WITH the trailer after I found a bad crank bearing. It's all back together now with a fresh topend and a nice low hour oem crank. I also put on new counterbalance bearings and seals, and of course new fuel filters in the tank AND inline. All together I have about 1k into this one and I'm asking 3k. Probably spent 6 hours on cleaning/detailing.

u guys dont use the heat gun for plastics ..??

Are the prices $ 2,200 + 2, 500 with a single trailer or just the skis ?

orangefinger said:

u guys dont use the heat gun for plastics ..??

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I don't........I figured out some years back that it only looks good for a while, then gets about twice as bad as it originally was.

Not sure how dry I can keep it right now , massive thunderstorms have been rolling through here daily this week , my garden is loving it though.

I have to make a trip up to the lake to do some lake calls so I will get back on this RFI Sunday or Monday and see what's up.

Monday is a much better water test day for me anyway , no water patrol on the lake , nobody else on the lake either then and this ski doesn't have current regs just yet , my renewal month is this month .

I have my shop name/number, and decals on the back glass of the tow rig. I test in regularly used areas with park rangers ALL THE TIME. And lots of these I fix have invalid/expired/missing registration. ONCE.....I was asked about it and I explained that's what I do and they need tested under a load to make sure everything is working SAFELY and correctly before I hand it back to the customer. I've NEVER been questioned since.

Myself said:

I have my shop name/number, and decals on the back glass of the tow rig. I test in regularly used areas with park rangers ALL THE TIME. And lots of these I fix have invalid/expired/missing registration. ONCE.....I was asked about it and I explained that's what I do and they need tested under a load to make sure everything is working SAFELY and correctly before I hand it back to the customer. I've NEVER been questioned since.

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You are very lucky , I have been pulled over before and I find it best to avoid them if at all possible .

This one followed me home yesterday so I guess I have to keep it , actually this ski belongs to Doug and we are pulling the engine to in mine and splitting the deal , my part is the labor and building the second engine.

This one is really rough but the hull is in very nice shape with zero damage , it needs a hood, deflector , seats, handlebar pad and graphics , gauges still look good.

I am not really feeling doing two Coppertone skis right now so I may do a color change , I am defiantly not doing stock graphics these are horrid on this year model , nothing appealing about them to me anyway.

There ain't no telling how this ski will end up looking or what color it will be , IDK just yet my mind has to spin the wheels for a minute on this one.

The game plan is to pull the fuel canister and the fuel rail on mine and get this one running in this hull then pull the engine , I will most likely just put a new fuel pump and filters in mine anyway , I want it good to go when it leaves my shop. Mine needs a hood deflector and I have a wrecked one of these at my shop that was tee boned in the side , I think the hood deflector on it is good , seats, graphics , hull all good to go on mine so this should go fairly quickly if it will stop raining this week.

I fully realize that I am being (one of those guys) right now but I have an issues with this, the GTS is listed on Facebook and it finally has some decent interest so I get this text from a guy that apparently is a Fisherman, he says it's snapper season, I don't really do seafood so HELLIFIKNOW.

Anyway this is the message I got today and this is my response, I fully realize my thinking is most likely totally wrong here, I get that but I put a lot of work into these skis and truefully I don't want to sell them to someone who is going to do this and totally ruin a perfectly good ski.

Message below :

Out of all the skis you have which ski would you tear up the bay and coast with?

Reply :

none of them you are going to totally destroy any of them riding them in salt water .

If nothing else selling on Facebook marketplace is entertaining at least , so far I have been offered a 250 2 stroke dirt bike, he worded it just like that no mention of year , make or model of the dirt bike, a zero turn lawn mower , a 14 ft jon boat with a 4hp motor and trolling motor and $1500 and $2000 . The only offer I would even entertain is the $2000 offer at this point.

Also a woman has been bugging me all day about where I live, when can she look at the ski, she needs to see it ASAP , when I told here I was at work and didn't get off till 5:00 I never heard another word out of her , no one in there right mind is coming to look at a ski today in the middle of the rainstorms.

The first ski I flipped was a 1992 Seadoo SP , this was back in maybe 96-97 when I worked at the Ski club , the local Ski Nautique dealership .

I built a lot of engines for this one guy who had a shop in Selma and he sold me the ski cheap , I, replaced the wear ring , reupholstered the seat and put the SPI graphics on it and a decent impeller , I built the crankshaft myself at the shop because I was building them back then , SBT wasn't really on the scene yet and getting a rebuilt crank wasn't as easy as it is these days , then I had it bored etc.
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Back then you took a brand new SP , added a rear grab handle and replaced the impeller with a stainless steel one to make an SP to make it into an SPI , all the graphics got stripped , handlebar cover replaced and you did some trickery with the exhaust water routing , all of the parts including the impeller came with the kit and I got it dirt cheap . The graphics were the ones with all the mauve and purple dots on it , in my opinion the best looking SPI ever made .

I didn't have a trailer but the shop had a bandsaw and a nice Miller mig welder so I drew the plans up in chalk on the shop floor and built the trailer right there , I think it sold for around $1500 to $2000 which was damn good money at the time.

Years later when I was working back at the Seadoo dealership the trailer came in with a Seadoo GTS on it , so I must have done something right lol.

Nice!! I don't have any cool stories like that. My first flip was in about '02. I had ordered SEVERAL parts for fixing up my own pair of WR500's from the local dealer. I also went in with my bro-in-law to order parts for his '94-ish SP. One day I get a random call from the dealer, they got in a pair of '95 GTX's on a double trailer.......both need work......if I'm interested they want 1k. I bought 'em, spent about $800 fixing them both up, and sold the package for $3500.

The final piece of the puzzle , the rear vents, these were broken, I found a set on another GTS I have but they where completely white and a bit fuzzy , I wet sanded them with 400 grit and dawn , they didn't look much better but they were smoother , then I hit them with the heat gun, it did nothing but they are dry now.

Nothing left to do here but hit them with SEM vinyl dye, any protectant or anything else that was on here is long gone so no need for extensive prep , point and shoot then let dry in the sun for 30 minutes , in the end you end up with this , the push rivets are for Dorman products 963-1520 for Toyota -Lexus bumpers and are high as rip , the next ones will come from Amazon and be much much cheaper.

I think you can get 25 of them on Amazon for like $8.00 , but you do what you gotta do . I have a serious buyer on the way from Auburn this afternoon that will more than likely leave with this ski today , get this he has an FX1 and I told him about the Lake Martin get together ion June 28th.

Ya...........when there's no color left in the plastic, the only option is to paint. They look great though.

What a difference a few minutes with a scrub brush and a heat gun make, nasty graphics are gone , nasty looking seat is gone and this is only a halfass decent looking seat .I see some potential here .

Meeting the guy this morning on the GTS , it's going out the door for $2000 , I had it listed for $2300 , then changed it to $2200 so I am right at my target price, I always add in another $300 for wiggle room , sometimes I make an extra $300 and there is no price negotiation .

This sale opens the door to get at least three more skis hopefully completed and sold before July 4th , wish me luck.

You a hustlin flippa. In your area are there many others like you?

Here in the land locked state of CO there are a few flippers. I know most of them and they usually have 15-20 skis in their backyard.

Mobile Chernobyl said:

You a hustlin flippa. In your area are there many others like you?

Here in the land locked state of CO there are a few flippers. I know most of them and they usually have 15-20 skis in their backyard.

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I wish I only had 15 -20 skis in my yard , maybe the yard here at the house , i honestly don't know the number of skis I actually have ,

There are more flippers here , of course , they are everywhere , they mostly try to sell junk for big money , I will post some of the crazy ones here later , there are no more like me lol.

Here ya go I call this the wall of dreamers :

Gts is gone, on to the next one.

Previously I had heard Myself mention the venom starter motors and that they have been working out really well, the other day I ran across this fuel float that Seadoo has discontinued and after doing some digging it looks like there is a whole world of venom products for watercraft out there ..

Like their starters this is a very good price $14.95 on Ebay.

This brings up a good question for the flippers - preference and experience with carb rebuild kits.

I've rebuilt a few dozen carbs by now it seems. I rarely, if ever, have luck with non-OEM kits. In fact just recently had some CDK2 carbs on a kawi 750 sit down that I spent a few hours with A/M carb kits trying to tune. Ripped out the riverready21 kits and threw OE hot products Keihin kit in and they ran perfect.

When it comes to our primary skis - I'm sure we probably all would opt for OE kits. But when it comes to skis we want to flip and sell for some realized profit - what are y'all finding out there in terms of after market carb kits you can trust?