Handy I’m not

Our jet ski died the other day, after sucking something through the engine and destroying the wear ring. I figured I could take it to our local dealership for repairs (there’s only one dealership within several hundred miles), but it would be costly and probably take weeks since it’s high season. So I gritted my teeth and decided to attempt the repair myself.

The guy on YouTube who explained how to replace a wear ring started by saying “this should take around half an hour”.

(pause for laughter)

It took me three and a half hours.

Admittedly, I had to run up to Kalispell to get a part because after taking everything apart, I found something else broken. That took about an hour and a half. So I guess my ratio against YouTube repair videos is about 4:1.

That said, Pepper and I felt like we should go out on the lake to exercise the jet skis and make sure everything was running smoothly, and my repairs worked flawlessly. I may not be very handy, but I was successful, and if the wear ring blows out again, I know what I’m doing and may be able to shave my time down to a mere hour and a half…