How to Prepare Your Sea-Doo or Jet-Ski for Winter

by Tony Smith

Winterizing is the process you go through in the fall so that when the spring boating season arrives, your engine starts and runs like it was never put away in the first place. Doing the work yourself isn’t terribly difficult, but you don't want to procrastinate. With a couple of special tools, a factory service manual, and a flushing attachment, you can easily perform these winterization steps in less than a day.

To properly winterize your personal watercraft, you need to wash it throughly with a quality auto wash soap. On some models, you should remove the drive shaft cover to access the grease fittings for the drive train. After greasing the drive train with water resistant grease, you can reinstall the cover. At this point, it is important to add fuel stabilizer to the fuel in your tank. Be sure to follow the directions on the product. On some watercraft, you can remove the cooling hose on the head and blow compressed air through the line and the head. A wet/dry shopvac can also be used to remove water. After reinstalling the line, you should start and run the engine for 15-20 seconds. This will circulate the fuel stabilizer through the fuel lines and carburetors/fuel injectors.

On Sea-Doo models, you will need to change the pump oil every 100 hours. It is important that you use a high quality gear oil. I prefer Sea-Doo pump oil. On some models of personal watercraft, there will be a removable plug on the flame arrestor to spray fogging oil through. You can start the motor and spray fogging oil down in the intake system through the access hole.

Another important part of winterizing is proper battery maintenance. First, disconnect the battery and top it off with distilled water. Maintenance-free batteries don't require this. Next hook up a Battery Tender, Jr. to maintain your battery's charge in the off-season. A fully charged battery can withstand extreme cold that would otherwise ruin a discharged battery.

To keep your contral cables from rusting you will need to install a cable lube adapter to the throttle cable and oil injection cable. Next, you should pressure-lube the cables with a quality cable lube. A lot of people are tempted to use WD40, but we do not. To finish off, dress the motor with fogging oil and wipe it down carefully. You are now finished with your winterizing.

If you find yourself short on time or simply would rather have someone else do the work, call me and schedule a time to bring your watercraft in. The repairs can get very expensive after a hard freeze.