nbman

I am brand new to personal watercraft. I recently purchased two tigershark watercraft, 94 Baracuda and 95 Monte Carlo. The Monte Carlo had a blown piston. Having worked on snowmobiles before, i figured i could tackle it. After doing the rebuild, i went to fire it up this afternoon. The first thing i did (which i now think was a big mistake) was to hook up the hose to the inlet on the left side towards the front and turn it on. Then i went back to start the unit. It wouldnt start, so i decided to pull the plugs top see if there was spark. Much to my surprise, there was a mixture of water and assembly oil shoot out BOTH the holes when turning it over. i quickly shut off the water, and panicked.
After checking compression (220 psi both sides), and some deduction, i figured that the water must be entering through the exhaust. I kept turning it over, letting the water be sucked up out of the base and shot out the plug hole until it was mostly gone, put fresh plugs in again, and tried to start it without the water turned on. After some coaxing, it finally fired up, and ran perfectly for about 30 seconds before i shut it down so it wouldnt overheat. I decided to start it, and turn the water on after it was running. It ran that way for 10-15 minutes, water coming out through the back in two places, the impeller area, and the area just to the right of that.


SO, here are my questions:

1. Do i have something majorly wrong, or did i just do it wrong in the first place with the water on?
2. If the answer to #1 is i did it wrong, then since I've now had it running up to temp, should it be ok, or have i possibly caused more damage?
3. What stops this from happening under normal operating?

Thanks for any help.

YamaDoo

Yes, you always turn the motor on first then turn the hose water on, and not full blast either just cracked enough to see water coming out the jet pump. You need to run that ski for at least an hour in the water to remove the remaining moisture in the motor. Remember though your motor is freshly rebuilt so you still have to follow break in procedure.

nbman

So i have not caused any further damage?

Also, i had it running again for several minutes with the hose again last night. Again it ran fine, but the PTO side cylinder got quite warm, while the mag side stayed cool. Any reason why this would be? I should mention that the PO had removed the thermostat. I'm not sure if was removed before the piston burndown or if it was removed and lost/thrown out when he tore it down after the meltdown. Also, It was the Mag side piston that had burned, hole dead center top of the piston.

Thanks