OUTLAW EAGLE MANUFACTURING

[sheep]

I had trouble all last season with my 175 sportjet reverse. Looking for anyones experience with this.

First, my reverse bucket fell off and broke the reverse cable off. After operating my boat for quite a few trips with no reverse. A friend had a woldridge bucket that he said I could have, I installed that. I then replaced the cable and realized that the transom of my boat was built different then most, as the cable didn't line up with the cable attachment point on the bucket.

Thats when my memory reminded me that my original sportjet bucket had a seperate bracket welded onto it to accept the reverse cable hookup. No big deal, I welded a flat piece of 1/4inch aluminum on it much larger than I figured I would need. (This is were its going to get hard to explain.) I manually lifted the bucket up to "forward", put the helm controller in full forward and put a felt pen in the hole in the end of the cable and drew a arch on the piece of 1/4 inch I welded on. Then I done the same procedure with the bucket in reverse and the helm controller in full reverse. Where the two lines crossed I drilled my hole for the cable to mount in.

I removed the bucket again to remove the excess 1/4inch material on the mounting point. I then decided it would be a good Idea to weld a couple deflector pieces on the reverse holes to shoot the water under the boat instead of against the transom, hoping to improve the reverse capabilities.

The first time I tested the boat, the reverse was definatly better but you couldn't give it any gas or it would flip the bucket up out of the way and go into "forward". This would really jam up the helm controller as it is a reverse and throttle in one unit. I had to manually reach under the swim platform and pull the bucket back into reverse before I could operate the helm control again.

Once out of the river I done some testing. If I had the helm control in reverse I could easily lift the bucket up out of the way into "forward". I decided that the helm control must have been damaged when the reverse bucket fell off the first time. I replaced it, the same model was no longer available and I ended up with a different one but still a reverse and throttle in one lever model. I installed requiring some cutting but no big deal. In the shop I tried the full forward on the helm controller and lifting on the bucket test again, it seemed rock solid. I really thought I had won at this point.

The next time unloading it off the trailer it had great reverse, seemed like I had won. I tried once on step a full reverse stop, it started to do it and then flipped the bucket up and carried on in forward. I had to manually pull the bucket into reverse again before I could run the helm control. When I got home that time I had decided to cut the deflectors off the bucket, after further looking at this I believe it was a bad Idea as it pushed the water under the boat well it also lifted on the bucket. I was hoping that would fix all problems.

It would still lift the bucket after that when I applied any throttle to it in reverse and jam up the controller, requiring me to pull the bucket down manually before I could continue. That became a safty issue in short order and quite frankly I was sick of all of it. I took the bucket off and have been using it as a shop decoration ever since.


So I guess I am wondering what your suggestions are.

[On-Track]

FYI Exact out of PG has a sport jet SDR reverse bucket out on the market that works better then the stock buckets. No modifications or shift linkages required to make it work properly.

[sheep]

Thankyou, I did realize that, its actually what my friend replaced his woolridge with.. I would still need to modify the shift linkage, as the cable does not exit the boat where most boats do.


Most sportjet powered boats have the shift cable housing attached to the pump itself and the inside (movable) part of the cable attached to the bucket. My boat was not built using the supplied mounting spot on the pump for some reason, it just has a hole drilled in the transom.


I guess I'm on my own on this one.. Lots of views and only one reply.

[On-Track]

Your going to have change out the SJ reverse cable and install a 4300 series cable with a threaded end instead of crimped eyelet. Then make up an threaded eyelet required to reach one inch onto the threads and to reverse bucket pin that should work.