Water in hull of waverunner?

Question

I have a 95 waverunner VXR 650 that i recently purchased. I took it out yesterday and i noticed that it had at least 3 inches of water in it after riding around for about a half hour. I thought maybe the bilge pump wasnt working so i blew the lines out and drained the water out and it still did it. it never really seemed to get much more than 3 inches of water . I put it on the trailer and drained it then put water in the hull with a hose to check for leaks and nothing dripped out at all. Is it normal to have that much water in it? Is the bilge pump not working right?Any suggestions would help out alot. Thanks for reading!

Answer 1

Having water in the hull is normal, but 3" deep is kind of a lot. Anything over 1" is cause for concern. The stock bilge pump works on a vacuum principle, and is pretty simple and trouble free. You have to be moving and going at lest 10mph for the vacuum to start sucking out the water.  If you idle your waverunner  a lot it won't be pumping out the water.   Some other places that you might be getting the water from is your cooling system, check and see if the hose to the exhaust pipe and waterbox is leaking.  A bad pump shaft seal could also be letting in an excessive amount of water, as well as various fittings like the steering nozzle linkage fitting.  If you ride in rough water and have waves breaking over your hood, water could be coming in that way as well.  You can always install an electric bilge pump, those will keep your hull quite dry.