Personal Water Craft

For many years now the personal water craft industry has seen an increase in both the number of vehicles being sold that fit in this category and legislation which restricts the use of these same vehicles. Concern over emissions and subsequent pollution of the waterways used by PWCs is growing problem, but the solution may not be to ban the vehicles but rather to provide 4-stroke alternatives to the traditional 2-stroke engines used in most of today’s PWCs.

To demonstrate our Rotapower engine in this application area we selected a Yamaha XL1200 Ltd 3-person WaveRunner™ hull. We left as much of the exhaust and ignition system unaltered as possible. We replaced the stock 2-stroke 1200cc engine with our 1590cc, three-rotor, 4-stroke Rotapower rotary engine. This engine uses the stock jet pump for cooling water and fits nicely into the space previously occupied by the WaveRunner’s 3-cylinder engine. We kept the oil and gas tank, with only slight modifications and used a Motec M4 engine control module for timing and fuel injection. The Rotapower engine produces 195 HP from the three rotors and has the smoothness of a 9-cylinder piston engine. Its deep but husky sound is impressive.