Best under $1K scooter?

[Uzbeckin]

Dan,

Curious which model of Sea Doo you were swimming with.. Most of them are really slow. I have a friend who swims like a fish (he was a life guard and pro boarder for years) and in his cressi fins at a descent kick - I can keep up with him fine if my Sea Doo Explorer X scooter is on high. I just logged a dive with him where he was using an aluminum 100 and I had an 80 - he's got about 20 years on me in diving so he really sips air - I on the other hand do not. We ended the dive at the same time and I could have gone a little farther. Sure I could get some super fins - but if I want to swim with him - I'd end up making him surface 10 minutes early. I'm working on my breathing and I've already got a great pair of fins... but you have to admit - going with an experienced friend - 90' with 30+ mins of dive time - pretty good for a newbie.

[Rainer]

Agree with others here. For $1000, your best bet is a used Mako.

[danvolker]

Dan,

Curious which model of Sea Doo you were swimming with.. Most of them are really slow. I have a friend who swims like a fish (he was a life guard and pro boarder for years) and in his cressi fins at a descent kick - I can keep up with him fine if my Sea Doo Explorer X scooter is on high. I just logged a dive with him where he was using an aluminum 100 and I had an 80 - he's got about 20 years on me in diving so he really sips air - I on the other hand do not. We ended the dive at the same time and I could have gone a little farther. Sure I could get some super fins - but if I want to swim with him - I'd end up making him surface 10 minutes early. I'm working on my breathing and I've already got a great pair of fins... but you have to admit - going with an experienced friend - 90' with 30+ mins of dive time - pretty good for a newbie.

To be honest, all I remember was that a couple divers on the charter were using Seadoos.... For you as a new diver, you are absolutely correct, this IS your best chance of matching the bottom time of a highly skilled and fit long time diver.
I was really offering a perspective for someone that just could not spend the money for a scooter, but wanted either to dive with guys that have scooters, or to just have more range or speed potential than they could have otherwise.
With the DiveR Freedive Fins, on a typical dive, I am not trying to swim at the speed of a scooter, I am keeping my heart rate very low, but the efficiency of the fins allows me to do this without being a slowpoke. DiveR freedive fins are exotic composites....if the best Cressi freedive fins are like a Ford Mustang, the DiveR fins are like a Lamborghini Gallardo, race version :-)....but the efficiency is what you really use..almost no effort to swim at the pace other divers swimming think isa a "good pace"..to you, it would be like you were not even swimming, which means you keep a very low heart rate, just like when scooter diving :-)

[Uzbeckin]

Mine is the bright yellow model that some scientists have claimed big sharks are more likely to bite. I'm going to take it out again today on a shore dive so say a little prayer for me it fares well and I don't end up towing it.

[DennisS]

Mine is the bright yellow model that some scientists have claimed big sharks are more likely to bite. I'm going to take it out again today on a shore dive so say a little prayer for me it fares well and I don't end up towing it.

Every time I use my scooter, the line from the charter boat captains keep going through my head, 'Big baits for big fish"

[Uzbeckin]

Shore dive went off beautifully. I'm really liking this scooter - especially since it only cost me $500 and pulls quite nicely - and contiuously for an hour.

[Peter_C]

Shore dive went off beautifully. I'm really liking this scooter - especially since it only cost me $500 and pulls quite nicely - and contiuously for an hour.

I paid $500 for my Mako too! Did another dive with it in the Red Triangle on Saturday and lived to tell about it. A couple hundred dives later, with a few upgrades/repairs, it still serves me well.

[Uzbeckin]

Peter,

$500 is an awesome deal for a mako. I've seen some old dying teknas for $500 but not the mako. I've dove makos for one of my DPV classes but was really interested how fast the rewound mako with the upgraded clutch and bigger batteries would fare against it. It already felt like quite a bit of power. Did you do all the upgrades? how much thrust?

[Peter_C]

My motor is bone stock. Works for longer run times, and more importantly less out of pocket expense. I do have the bigger heavier batteries, which it came with. That required gluing as much neoprene as possible to the tail of the scooter, and adding lead to the nose. I also made a wrap that goes around the body. In the future I will work on that even more. It also has an SK7 in a DSS mount on a stainless compass mount I made, which when traveling is my main compass. A Tekna handles does work 10 times better than the stock Mako handle, but they are also weaker, and it failed this weekend by cracking. Hopefully I can glue it back together again! I had already done so before and made a larger stainless insert for more support of the handle. The other side handle was removed and I welded up a stainless mount to put my harness onto. The nose cone got upgraded to the thicker lexan from a forum posted sale. From the same person I picked up a used set of aluminum blades. The trickest thing though is one of my friends is an electrical engineer and developed a universal circuit board that allows me to have speed control, soft start, and no more relays. He installed the board in his Gavin and it is a nice upgrade. It works with pretty much any scooter that doesn't already have speed control. After an accidental run away scooter on the surface, my hand in the prop killed the clutch. Therefore it got an AUL clutch. That is about the extent of my upgrades and they have come over a few years.