jpwhit

What @DW said, plus I believe the seals for a marine water pump are different. Automobile water pump seals are designed assuming there is anti-freeze, which has some lubricating properties. A boat water pump, for an open loop cooling systems, assumes the seals have to survive running in a straight water with no antifreeze.

Misfire will cause a very significant loss in power. Much more than the impact of the ECU retarding the engine timing due to knocking. Misfire issue would also have completely different causes. Such as bad plug wire, plug, etc....

Carbon build up in the heads will raise the compression ratio and can lead to engine knocking. Assuming the knock sensor are working, the ECU will retard the timing to try and prevent the knocking. That will cause some degree of power loss.

Our ski club has gotten a couple of bad batches of polyform bouys in the last 24 months. They said they were missing the UV protection ingredient and they provided replacements. But we continued to have issues so we've switched to a different brand and they are doing well. Pretty much exactly the symptoms described in this thread.

The regulator in the alternator likely failed. Was probably putting out a high voltage and over current until the diodes or windings in the alternator burned out due to over current. And now it's not putting out anything.... From the PCM technical manual ECM DIAGNOSTIC TROUBLE CODES The following codes indicate a problem with the Main Electrical System. Start at the battery, verifying that it is good, then troubleshoot your Main Electrical System power and ground paths. Correct any problem you may find. Then verify the Charging System is operating properly. Replace the alternator as required. DTC 562 Battery Voltage Low - Battery voltage less than 10.0 volts at 1500 RPM. DTC 563 Battery Voltage High - Battery voltage greater than 16.0 volts.

You really don't want of boat in this age range with only 250 hours. That would typically be a boat that hasn't been run consistently every season. Not being run for lengths of time is much worse for an engine than being run and serviced regularly.

From the article @303Skier posted... “The single puck makes for a faster reaction time. It’s the only thing talking to the engine and the engine doesn’t have a second puck to communicate with, so the reaction time is going to be much greater.” hmm..... sort of splitting hairs but .... The part about reaction time may very well be true. But the puck's themselves aren't on the CAN bus. The pucks communicate to the Zero Off head unit via RS232 connections and the Zero Off head unit is on the CAN bus and communicates to the Engine ECM.....

Another key thing that I've found that makes anchors hold much more reliably, is having 4" of heavy lead chain attached to the anchor. Then attach your line to the other end of the lead chain.

I added pre-gates to my portable course 5-6 years ago. I went to bigger anchors and reworked the method I use to tension the course. My course was originally setup where you pulled on an extra line at one end connected to the anchor to tension the course. Essentially you moved that anchor. It's not a very effective way to tension a course, because of the unpredictable way an anchor bites into the bottom after being moved. I changed the way the main line attaches to the diamond at the pre-gate on one end of the course. Instead of simply being connected, the line feeds through a stainless steel ring and then went through an adjustable rope stop. "Rope Stop" is probably not the correct term, but I don't know what it really should be called.... When I take the course out, I let the rope all the way out at the adjustment point at the diamond near the pre-gate. When I put it in, I use the rope at the end of the anchor to setup basic tension and to get the anchor set. Then I go to the adjustment point at the pre-gate to really get the tension set high enough to so the course stays straight. You need a weight on the end of the excess rope at the pre-gate adjustment so the excess rope sinks out of the way. You also need anchors that bite really well into the bottom of your particular lake.

It's true that a reading right around 12v with the engine off, after sitting a while, won't guarantee that the boat will start. But a reading much below 12V will be a good sign that the battery has discharged and it's likely you will have trouble. Especially anything around 10V or lower is very good indication of trouble. A 12V car battery is made up of six 2V cells. So when a cell goes bad, it'll often read right around 10V. If your battery is in reasonable shape, and you don't have any issues in your electrical system that causes loads on the battery when it's off, you shouldn't really have to put a charger on it when it's not used for a few weeks. If you do, then it's a sign of a problem that should be fixed.

I got so fed up with getting good quality video that I hacked together a solution using a cheap JVC camcorder from ebay. The key is getting one with good true optical zoom and at least 60fps frame rate. Order of magnitude better results that anything I could make work with a cell phone or GoPro. But the real productivity enhancer is software I threw together to automate the video post-processing so it ended up in the cloud for easy viewing with almost no manual work for me to do after each ski session.

If a boat were designed to implement the same style of auto start/stop that is becoming common in the automobile industry, it would have to follow a similar strategy that is being used in cars. It would have to switch over to electric coolant and/or oil pumps such that cooling and/or oil flow continued during the shutoff periods. That's how many cars avoid the wear issues of start/stop cycles mentioned here. This is very true and common in any car that has a turbo. Which is a very similar issue as the catalytic converters that are now standard in boats. These type of components simply must have some form of cooling during the shutoff periods. Also as previously mentioned, some form of electrical maneuvering thrust would make such a system much more beneficial in my opinion. I'm involved in the development of these types of systems via my work. And there is a lot of this technology in the development pipelines right now. And as mentioned earlier, a lot of these designs are based around belt driven electric machines. The systems in the development pipeline right now combine engine starting, power generation, and engine power augmentation in the form of mild electric hybrid capabilities into one system. Most of based on a DC power system that is independent of the typical 12v system. Many are 48V DC. It seem inevitable to me, that this technology will trickle down into the marine engine business.

@Than_Bogan I have the same issue with the racy ads preventing where I can view the site. It's forced me to reluctantly install and configure the Adblock Plus browser plugin to block all the banner ads from the site.

I pulled my SN 200 short distances w/ a 2-door wrangler TJ. It worked fine as long as the trailer brakes worked perfectly.... My trailer brakes required constant attention to work perfectly. And by perfectly, I mean you can't back up the trailer without the wheels locking up when the backup override isn't on. When the trailer brakes didn't work perfectly, the boat would push the back end of the jeep around in any kind of hard stop. This was quite scary and dangerous. It's due to the very short wheelbase of the jeep. Power wasn't a problem, the jeep had plenty of power. This was with the 4L straight 6 and a 6-speed manual. If you're thinking about one of the newer 4-door wranglers with the longer wheelbase, I think it would be much better.

I use to pull my Nautique 200 with a Jeep Wrangle TJ some. From a power point of view it's fine. But you really really need the trailer to have brakes because of the short wheelbase. The brakes on my trailer ended up with air in the lines at one point, and it was crazy scary pulling the boat like that even being super cautious. When the trailer brakes were working well, it pulled it fairly nicely.

Plugs can look great and still be bad. The internal connector through the ceramic insulator can break down over time. Unless the plugs, wires, rotor, and cap have low hours on them, I'd change them all.

Yes, did the swap from the 40i to 80i when our 40i failed. The trans itself matches up in terms of the mounting bolt pattern. You need a new flex plate to bolt to the flywheel. The splined input shaft on the 80i is different. Also the transmission cooler for the 80i is different and much larger. So all the hoses for that have to be rerouted. We had to be very careful on mounting the elbow fittings to the cooler so we could get the oil lines in just the right place to clear the engine mounts and side rails of the boat. The shift cable routing is quite different, and depending on how much routing flexibility and length you have with your existing cable, it's possible that you may need a new shift cable and/or have to change the direction of movement of the shift cable up at the shift lever. PCM sells the 80i in a kit that includes the new oil cooler and the flex plate. Just make sure you get that instead of just the trans. It would also have been very helpful if we knew precisely which direction was forward vs reverse on the new transmission shift lever. We had to take an educated guess knowing we may have to change the cable direction once we tried it. Luckily we were correct with our guess. I can look next time I'm in our boat and let you know.

I've been involved in competitive mountain biking for many years and think there are some useful parallels between the organizations in that space and in water skiing. In the early 1980s the National Mountain Bike Association (NORBA) was formed and was the governing body most closely associated with mtb competitions, licenses, and insurance for competitions. But NORBA really never expanded beyond that competition focus. In the late 1980s, the International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA) was formed with a focus on trail access issues for the MTB community. NORBA did well as long as mtb competition was growing endeavor, but as that aspect of mountain biking stop growing, and riders started to care more about other aspects of mountain biking, NORBA had trouble maintaining membership and was eventually absorbed into USA Cycling in lieu of just totally disappearing. IMBA is still going strong and is approaching 50,000 members now because access issues are a real and tangible benefit for all mountain bikers. I think water skiing is really suffering from the same kind of access issues as mountain biking, yet there doesn't seem to be an organization with access issues as a core part of it's charter. I would certainly be more inclined to keep up a USAWS membership if the organization showed real progress in this area. When I say access issues I'm referring to things like permitting issues for courses on public waters, access and availability of private ski sites, improvement to rules and regulations around the use of portable courses, better ways to deal with conflict between water skiing, wake boarding, jet skis, fishermen. I know some folks will say well that's just too hard. But solving hard issues is what creates value for its members. People said the same thing in the early days of IMBA as well. But IMBA has made great strides in difficult land access issues as well as user interactions issue between mountain bikers, hikers, and equestrians.

@AkBob we did not notice any transmission fluid in the bilge, which puzzled us when we did notice the level was low on the dipstick. Unfortunately, the level dropped quickly enough once the seal started leaking that we didn't catch it soon enough to prevent the damage. Once we realized we were losing fluid, we checked it often and kept it topped up until it finally failed. We discovered the reason for the lack of fluid in the bilge when we changed the transmission. When the rear seal goes, the fluid leaks out into the center of the coupler between the transmission and the shaft. The fluid then exits through the joint between the coupler halves...so around the perimeter of the coupler. The floor carpet on the removable rear deck wraps around with a fair amount of carpet on the backside. In our case, and I expect it's this way on many boats, that carpet had sagged just slightly enough that it was very lightly touching the perimeter of the coupler. The carpet on the backside of the rear deck soaked up and retained all the leaking fluid. It was quite saturated by the time we fixed the problem. I don't think, based on what I know, I'd be comfortable claiming the 40A is a poorly designed transmission. As you point out, I think it's been around a while. I think everyone is aware that the 200 hull needs more power, but I don't have enough data on failure rates of 40A in the 200 hull to be comfortable promoting the conclusion the 40A is inadequate in the 200 hull. Others on the forum, may have more insight. But I will say the 80A is clearly a much beefier design when you compare them side by side.

Earlier 200s have a PCM 40A transmission. I'm not sure of the exact date of switch over, I'm thinking 2012 or 2013, but the current transmission is the 80A. Also, nobody has mentioned a fairly common cause of transmission failure... Shaft Misalignment. If you don't check and keep your shaft alignment in spec, the side load on the rear transmission seal will cause it to leak. Then what typically happens is the fluid gets low, the transmission pump starts sucking air, and gets damaged. Once the pump is damaged, the fluid pressure is low and you start to get slippage. Once you get any slippage, it's all over for the transmission clutch pack. We lost a transmission on our club boat due to this at around 700 hours. When we changed it, it was very clear the shaft alignment was way off. What happened in our case is engine vibration loosened up the jam nuts on the front engine mounts. They dropped over time and cause the misalignment. Live and learn, we now do a shaft alignment as part of our yearly maintenance. And I'm pretty sure that's is a recommended yearly maintenance item from Nautique.

After a little digging, it looks likes Indmar did start implementing misfire detection at some point, because I see those fault codes in their service manuals. I assume that's likely true for other marinizers like PCM as well. But it looks like when it was added varies by marinizers, because I don't see fault codes for engine misfire detection in early version of the PCM EX-343 for example. I'm a little surprised since they all use eControls ECUs. But they must be slightly different by marinizer. Thinking about it a little more, this also makes sense given that marine engines now have catalytic converters, which can overheat and be damaged if the engine is run with a misfire. So I expect they all implemented it by the time they added catalytic converters. Keep in mind that the way ECU's typically implement misfire detection is by monitoring differences in angular velocity of the crank or camshaft for each firing of a cylinder. So any issue that results in a particular cylinder producing less power than it's neighbors can generate the fault. So typical things that can cause this code are not just ignition components such as plugs, wires, and coils, but it can also be caused by low compression in a cylinder or a sticking or partially plugged injector. You may not be able to "feel" the misfire like you would when a cylinder is completely not firing, it just has be a certain percentage different than the other cylinders. Common components like crank/cam sensor, coil in a single coil system, will more often than not generate codes for multiple cylinders. If the code is always a certain cylinder, it's usually a component that's specific to that cylinder. Like with a lot of engine issues, a compression test is a good place to start just to rule out that type of issue.

@oldjeep already said it was cylinder 3, which I would guess he knows by age old method of pulling plug wires. I think the info he's looking for is why..... @oldjeep, what engine do you have? Is it a single coil engine with a traditional distributor or a coil per cylinder engine?

Please let us know if it's useful in diagnosing your misfire. I've held off from buying it myself because the Linc electronic dash on the 200 will read and display the fault codes from the ECU. That's not all the data you can get from the Diacom, but it's the most critical data. But I suspect the live data from Diacom could be very helpful for some issues. In terms of misfires, it's my understanding that unlike car ECUs, the eControls marine ECU does not do ignition misfire detection. Which limits the usefulness of Diacom for diagnosing misfires since the ECU doesn't have much data about misfires. Car ECUs do misfire detection largely because the EPA requires it. I do wonder if the new direct injection engines have implemented misfire detection in that version of the marine ECU.

The zero in the upper left is the current speed. Make sure 30 mph is highlighted as in your picture and then just click somewhere else on the screen. You're good to go. You can touch the speedo icon again and make sure it comes up with 30 again to make sure it's set properly.

I have a few of the earlier model Garmin GPS-18x LVC pucks that I used for a past project. I'm pretty sure it's the right hardware version to work with ZO. I will have to change the connector, but what firmware needs to be loaded for it to work correctly with ZO. Is it just a specific version of Garmin Firmware? I think these have Garmin V3.50 firmware loaded at the moment.