2000 Genesis i, Anyone know of any pwc mechanics that work on Polaris? Toronto Canada

[K447]

Of course the pressure regulator fell off inside the fuel pump body. No surprise in that, but was not happy to discover rust on the fuel pump coil spring.



Took the old pump apart and rebuilt with pieces from a spare Polaris Ficht pump.

Looks much better now, and should work reliably. Filters did not show evidence of contamination so left them as is.



Note to self: On the Genesis Ficht fuel tank the fuel sender float and float arm orients towards the front of the tank. On Virage the sender float faces the rear of the tank.

[K447]

Took this photo after replacing a portion of the old original gray Tempo fuel hoses. The old hoses were hardened and quite stiff, no longer flexible.

This engine had been repaired or rebuilt sometime before I got to it. Many hose connections were not tightly sealing anymore and many of the gear style hose clamps were not snug.

Not only were the clamps not tight on the old fuel hoses, they were not even round! Many of these were larger clamps that had been cranked down to 'fit' the small fuel hoses diameter. Talk about poor sealing...




The red hoses are new, gray is the old stuff.
Photo taken as I was preparing to remove more old fuel hose sections so some of the clamps were loosened by me.

I also removed the fuel injectors to avoid stressing the plastic tee fittings at each fuel injector. The old hose material had to be cut and carefully removed.

Whatever thread locker compound was used in these injector bolt holes was scary tough to extract the injector mounting bolts. Very high friction and screeching noises, tight all the way out.

Ran a thread tap into each bolt hole to clean out the threads. Genesis seat cross brace was annoyingly in the way for thread tapping effort. Compressed gas to clear the holes of tap debris (cover the cylinder head open injector holes first). Then reinstall the fuel injectors.



Looks much better with new fuel hose and proper hose clamps. Ran out of Oetiker style hose clamps

[K447]

When the driveshaft was removed there was no rubber bumper stuck to the engine end of the shaft. Since Genesis uses a double stacked rubber bumper at the engine end (double thick single rubber bumper for 2002-2004 Genesis 5133375) I wondered if the bumpers had fallen off inside the engine drive coupler.

Update: Apparently some Genesis have a plastic front end driveshaft bumper, not rubber.




Turns out there were three rubber end bumpers jammed into the back of the coupler. Took some jigging and poking with a stiff wire/hook to coax them out. All three were too damaged and aged to reuse.



The through-hull bearing was removed and rebuilt. Needed two new bushings plus new shaft seals. There was zero useful grease inside the bushing cavity, almost no grease at all. My guess is that the old grease had been washed out by water pushing through the worn shaft seals during riding.

Despite the bushing wear and lack of grease the old driveshaft was in good shape, only very minor surface wear, barely detectable with fingers. Used 600 grit wet sandpaper to buff shaft surface finish in through-hull area.



Here is the through-hull bearing right after I removed it from the hull. No grease



You can see the Teflon coating on the bushings has been completely worn away, exposing the sintered brass metal material. There was visible slop when the assembly was slid onto the removed driveshaft, definitely needed new bushings along with new seals.

[K447]

Since someone before me had worked on or replaced the engine, I checked the alignment to the jet pump. Alignment was incorrect.


Alignment tool was nowhere near able to slide into the PTO coupler before I adjusted the engine position.


While adjusting the alignment I find some of the engine mount bracket nuts are not tight.


Before


After

This was front left mount, tucked under the big exhaust log pipe, hard to get a camera in there!

One SS bracket stud was fractured. Going to stay that way.

Related notes re Polaris engine alignment: I do not like the way Polaris watercraft engine aligning is done, even with the proper tools. Way too much futzing about with shims and jigging the engine around on the mounts, then tightening the big nuts and hoping the alignment does not shift.

When the alignment tool does not want to slide fully into the coupler on the engine, it can be difficult to determine which way(s) the engine needs to shift. I remove the bolts holding the alignment stator onto the pump base and allow the stator to release from the pump base ring, but not slide very far back on the alignment shaft.

Now the weight of the stator is only supported by the forward end of the tool shaft in the engine coupler! And also supported by my hand on the rear end of the alignment tool. Press the tool fully into the engine coupler. The through-hull bearing is removed during this process.

What I next do is watch how much 'flex' there is as I lift the rear end of the alignment shaft and stator up, then let it sag gently. If the stator rim flexes roughly as much above the pump base rim when I lift as it flexes below when I let it sag, then the engine is reasonable close in alignment vertically.

Then I hold the stator level with the pump base and flex the shaft left and right. Again I am looking for equal flex range on each side of the pump base. In my case the stator could flex much more to the left of the base than to the right. This meant the front of the engine needed to shift left so the rear of the engine would pivot to the right.

Once I got the flex range to be visually equal in up-down and left-right by adjusting the engine shims and forcing the engine to seat differently on the mounts (with alignment tool removed during the actual adjustment process, then re-tightening the mounts), the engine should be pretty close to aligned.

Reattach the stator to the pump base and verify the alignment tool will nicely slide into the coupler and seat against the engine PTO shaft end, without binding or needing huge force to insert.

[K447]

The impeller 5131366 looks ok except for apparent rock damage that bent two of the blades near the trailing edges.




Minimal or no blade damage.


Bent blade


Most bent of the three blades

[K447]

And now for some water testing. First stage test will be still strapped to the trailer on the launch ramp with seat off, next step will be actually floating and running on the water.

[K447]

Other random notes;

The impeller had an o-ring jammed/stuck into the nose, needed serious force to get the drive shaft to come out, even with lubricant.




This example was all dried up and cracked rubber. New o-ring will be needed.

Steering cable leaks where it exits the hull. There is lots of silver sealant smeared around almost everything, but not well done.

Update: Removed steering cable through-hull, cleaned and re-sealed, reassembled. Hopefully no more leaking now.

[K447]

...

And now for some water testing. First stage test will be still strapped to the trailer on the launch ramp with seat off, next step will be actually floating and running on the water.

Well, it runs.

Water leak around the steering cable hull penetration. Somebody has smeared silver colored sealant around lots of places, but rather messy job.



EMM that came with the machine is dead, does not even talk to DW.

Water testing was done using a spare EMM I had on the shelf, but it has not been repaired and seems to have issues. Balky mid-range and rarely able to reach over 6000 RPM. Ran well for a few seconds wide open, but this EMM needs to be serviced before I would trust it for daily use.

The 2000 Genesis engine seems to be OK mechanically, just a little low on compression across all cylinders.

Engine cooling seems good, EMM water fittings felt cold from the lake water flow. Re-routed some wires and tied up hoses to make the rear area tidy and provide visual access.



Since the spare EMM was not behaving, you can hear the engine sound stutter through the mid-range and not maintain a steady sound at wide open throttle. Plenty of steam from the exhaust at higher engine power levels.



Handling seems reasonable, hard to tell since the EMM was playing up and limiting engine power. The nose of the Genesis tends to dig in on hard turns with power applied, but again did not have full power available.

It certainly handles differently from the Virage TXi - longer, wider, heavier, slower to respond to steering inputs.

[K447]

Runs better but not perfect with a different EMM, this would be my spare Genesis EMM 'B'



This EMM sometimes allows the engine to scoot along at 6500ish RPM (as it should), but sometimes it holds the engine back to around 5500. 5500 RPM is a transition RPM for the EMM power section, so the injector voltage may be sagging when it tries to nudge above 5500 with full water load. When waves happen to bounce the jet pump clear of the water the engine has a chance to rev without load and then apparently it can maintain the higher revs upon reentering the water.

Starting tends to be rough, and midrange is a bit grotty. So yet another EMM that needs repair ...

Speedometer pitot hose was kinked under the driveshaft, I discovered, hence the sluggish response of the speedometer needle.

Now fixed;


The plastic protective sleeve was added just recently, but the kink was there already, I just had not yet noticed it.

I have not yet put the coupler cover back on, so I am trying this speedometer hose routing to reduce the chances of the speedo hose developing another kink over time.

[K447]

... The jet pump sounds kinda awful, bearings may be failing in there.

... I have a feeling this machine could become a challenge ...

When I took the jet pump out, the impeller bearings were not noisy and did not have any slop, no gritty feel. So I thought maybe they would be OK, and did not pull the tail cone off. Of course, that was the lazy approach, and we know better.

Today I removed the jet pump again, this time to change out the bent OEM impeller for a Solas impeller I have on hand. As soon as I removed the tail cone I could tell there was water inside



The grease was odd looking and had that skanky smell when water has been in there for a while.



Tell tale rust marks on the impeller spacer was another clue.



So now this stator hub is being rebuilt, the old seals and bearings are removed, hub cleaned up, old grease and grunge removed.

While it is apart I filed the dinged stator vanes where there was rock damage on the leading edges. Not perfect, but functional.