How many of you own a jet ski?

As some of you may know, a couple of years ago I bought a pair of jet skis in early winter (best time to buy price wise) and my family has had a blast on them. Those two are 1997 Kawasaki STX1100 Jet Skis. I found then that only Kawasaki makes a "Jet Ski". I'd discovered that I used the name "jet ski" for any personal watercraft. You know, sort of like saying I want a Coke when in fact you want a cola or some other soda.

Anyway, I just picked up another matching pair of Jet Skis. This time I went with 2004 models that are 4 stroke with fuel injection. The older ones are 2 stroke and have the automatic oil injection system. I'm always concerned that the injection system will fail and I'll cook an engine. But, what the heck, they've made it 11 years just fine. The newer ones supposedly get better fuel economy even though they have 4 cylinder engines that are 1500cc in size.

Anyway, my main purpose for the thread is to see if anyone knows a good place to get Jet Ski parts. It seems that I always need some odd little part and my local Kawasaki dealer just kills me on part prices. Last year I bought a couple of drain plugs from a place called Babbitts. They were less than my local dealer by quite a bit, but they still broke it off in me on shipping for a couple of ounces of parts.

I have a 700cc Yamaha two seater. It has done a great job for us on the water, and since the kids are grown I've half assed tried to sell it but never advertised it other than on forums. Anyway, I've always found the little parts for jet skis to be like motorcycle parts ..expensive. Normally it is motorcycle shops that sell them so maybe there is a connection.
I've resorted to online shopping but shipping and online catalogs with parts that are hard to traverse have made it a frustrating experience.
No solution but I hear ya and can relate ....

I've got a 750sxi or something like that. Not even sure of the brand.

I know they don't count as "boats", but I now have 5 Jet Skis; all 3 seaters. Since the last post I bought a 2007 Kawasaki 250 Ultra supercharged Jet Ski. It's sort of like the 2 2004 1500cc 4 stroke Jet Skis I bought a couple of months ago. I didn't mention that the 2004 Jet Skis were from some spoiled "rich kids" who had no respect for anything. They'd hammered them onto concrete boat ramps and knocked the crap out of the bottom of them and had run one through low water that must have had a pea gravel bottom that ate up the impeller and housing as well.

Gee, I'd forgotten how much fun it was to lay fiberglass. Not! Anyway, I had to buy me a new air file because my old one was just frozen beyond repair. It took me longer than I wanted, but I fixed the bottom of both of the 2004 matching Jet Skis and replaced the impellers on both with high performance impellers and replaced the housing on the one that had sprayed gravel. Anyway, neither ski had over 30 hours on them and they ran perfect. With the 'as good as new' hulls (fortunately none of the gouges were through and neither had leaked) and new impellers that were of higher pitch, I was thrilled with their performance. The fuel injection 4 strokes are a dream. They start easily, are the ultimate in smooth, are far easier on fuel, and both run right at 70 mph! Perhaps the best part was that with me doing all the work, I still have well under "rough" wholesale in them with a nice trailer and they now look like new. However, the need for speed got me.

That's when I bought the used (11 hours on it) 250 Ultra supercharged ski. It came out from the factory with 250 hp in a 10' long 750 pound boat. Stock it outruns a Z06 Corvette from 0 - 50 mph. Well, that wasn't quite good enough. I got it with a tuner that upped the HP to around 310 to 325 and one really high pitched impeller along with the stock impeller and a new trailer. According to my GPS on the only high speed pass I made in relatively smooth water (6" to 8" chop only) my GPS registered a somewhat impressive 94.2 MPH. I figured that was a bit too fast, believe it or not, so I put the stock impeller back on it and used the tuner to back it down one tune before I winterized it today.

Anyway, even though they are not real boats, I now have 5 Jet Skis with 3 of them that will run over 70 mph! I can't wait for spring now. With our wetsuits anything over 60 degrees is quite comfortable. I've never been into Jet Skis like I said, but do those speeds sound fast enough to you guys? I won't try to call them real boats even though they cost me about the same to register and insure.