fortknox71

Hey everyone,

Just bought a used 2002 Yamaha XLT1200 here in New England. When I went to get it the guy couldn't get it to stay running. It was firing and sounded good but if he took his finger off the throttle it was down. He had winterized it already but put gas/oil in it and in the spark plug section to try and show me that it was all good. He kept trying to get it to stay running but it wouldn't. The thing looked immaculate and he seemed pretty knowledgeable.
My question is this, was it simply too cold to get this thing running? It was about 8 degrees when we were trying to do this outside. How about spark plugs? Could it have been that?
I still bought it because I made him an offer "as is" figuring if I had to repair I'd still be within reasonable proximity of the value of the machine. Not to mention it's out of season here and it was already a good price.
Is there something I should be doing after winterizing it to help me get it going?

Thanks for any help out there.

killer454

i started my 2 1100 wave ventures last weekend in 15 degree weather and they fired right up and stayed running but 1 serged a littlebit.
if i where you i would do a compression test on all 3 cylinders to see what they are.
sometimes carbs get gumed up over winter time and just need a warmer day or cleaned out at spring.

fortknox71

Killer thanks for the reply. I wasn't sure I was going to get any. I did just buy a compression test kit in order to do this. What are the possibilities if the reading on one cylinder is bad? Am I in trouble or can these be fixed without replacing the engine?

killer454

if you read a low compression in a cylinder this is not to bad to fix.you just need to do a topend rebuild and this would consist of buying oversize pistons and finding a good machine shop to bore them out and fit the new pistons.the cost of this is around 400.00 and you would have a brand new top end.

sometimes you can just rering the top end or just buy new std pistons i have never done this i allways bore to the next size and make it all new.

what gets expensive on these engines is when they throw a rod out the block i have fixed 2 engines that did this and each engine cost me around 1000.00 to fix.
i totally rebuilt the first one myself new crank,cases,pistons,cylinders and all the machine work around 1000.00 total

the other engine i just bought a good used engine off ebay cost 900.00 still running fine though.

my 9 year old little girl loves these ski i could not sell them if i wanted to it would breake her heart.

1997 yamaha wave venture 1100 rebuild (part 1) - YouTube

crankshaft is here - Copy.MOV - YouTube

hope this helped you

fortknox71

Killer, I just put the Ski in my In Laws garage and fired it up this morning no problem!! Of course I only let it run for about 10 seconds because I had no water hooked up but it stayed running which it wouldn't do when I bought it. I didn't bother with the compression check because of this and I realized I didn't have a spark plug socket anyway.
Should I still do it? Is there anything else I can do to make sure I'm in good running order for the season? I'm completely new to this and besides trickle charging the battery, everything is a learning process on this machine.
I'm happy to hear it fire up so easily and stay running. That was the main concern.