I am buying a 1977 21' Omega jet boat with a 460 ford and a jacuzzi jet pump . I'm going to pick it up tonight and the guy said he is going to start it for me . Is there anything special I should know about it ? Is it like other boats where you should not run it without water going through it ? I don't know what the guy is going to do but I don't want him to hert it if he starts it dry. I have seen guys do this with wave runners .

Any input ? THanks

The reason you can't run a merc engine with out water is because of the rubber water pump. I beleive a jet boat gets water off of the bowl and has no pump.

P.S. I don't know much about the Omega boats, but does that one have full stringers?

Cord ,I'm not sure about the stringers yet. Do you mean ,do they go all the way from front to back ? or just in engine compartment ?
My big thing right now is to make sure weather or not it needs water to be run .

Thanks

Boot,
Cord is correct that the cooling water comes directly from the jet drive. There are varying opinions in regards to jet drives being ran out of the water. The water serves a couple purposes. First it acts as a lubricant(for lack of better terms)for the impeller and wear ring and second it acts as a coolant for the shaft packing in the suction housing. Jet drives should, by design, drip slightly at the shaft only when the engine is running as not to burn up the shaft packing.

I do run my boat on the trailer but never bump the throttle. Only idle or slightly above. What I do is to connect one water supply to the engine cooling main line and another water supply to the jet drive. The down side to this is that no water will get to the shaft packing. Only to the impeller and wear ring. Also make sure that the bowl is filled with gear lube so no shaft or bowl bearing(which is really only a coated bushing)damage occurs.

Sorry for the long explanation. If you want, give me a call at the office if you have any more questions. 847/368-5594

Paul

there should be an access panel on top of the pump....i put hose in hole to keep bowl full of water and fire it up. water is pumped from there into the engine with no restrictions (no water pump). there is a nylon wear ring that the impellar rides on in the pump and that's what you want to keep cool because it turns all the time. i don't think it would hurt to fire it up for just a second to check it.

Boot-you are correct.

I had a 1977 Challenger jet with a 460 Ford and a Jacuzzi pump. Check out the pump. The one I had was an one year model (cant remember the model #) that had some major design problems. The impeller was different from a normal jet. It looked just like a fan, not connected at the tips of the blades. It was more inefficient than a normal jet at cruising speeds and really sucked on top end. I added more HP and promptly shattered the impeller. At the time, 1987, Dominator made a conversion for the pump that consisted of a new bowl and a convential impeller. The boat performed much better after that.

One more thing. If the boat doesnt already have a Place Diverter and an intake loader you will need these items to make it as driveable as a sterndrive.

Ron

I was told the big problem with starting it dry was if you had dirt or other road debris in the pump from trailering it down the road. I have a hose connecter hooked to the cooling hose coming from the pump and thats what I use after I hose out the pump for dirt. Go over to Hot Boat, I have seen this subject discussed before. Good Luck

Hot Boat as in the magazine is not much of a resource for jetters anymore but their forums over on http://www.hotboat.net are. Another good board for jetters is over at http://www.banderlog.com. Good luck with your new toy, jets can be a heck of a lot of fun.

Thanks guys ,this is all a big help ! I picked it up last night . WHat a pain to get it off the blocks on to the trailer in deep sand !

It has a sea pump with a through hull pickup . He had the belt off and He started it . Sounded real good but it sounds like a little knock in the drive shaft or pump . He says it's U-joint ? Didn't get home with it till 1:30AM so I haven't even looked at it yet ! Probably won't till monday . And he did have all the books on it so that helps ! Thanks so much . Anymore input is welcome ! JOE (the new jet boater )! Still have my big ole pusser cat though !