Sea-Doo claims its RFI (Rotax Fuel Injection) system reduces hydrocarbon emissions on its 800 Series Rotax twin by up to 25 percent compared to the same engine with standard carburetion, as well as a 15 percent improvement in fuel consumption. Like the D-Sea-Bil system, Sea-Doo's RFI system has public relations benefits because of its reduced emissions. Those are the result of the RFI electronic fuel injection system, essentially the same system that debuted on last GTX RFI. Like the three-seater GTX RFI, the GSX RFI will be something of a tweener, not quite as powerful as the GTX Limited, but with better fuel economy and throttle response and cleaner emissions than either the Limited or Standard GSX models. Pretty much everyone familiar with the way Sea-Doo develops its product line knew that the RFI system would eventually find its way onto the GS platform, not to mention the rest of the lineup. Hopefully, more of this type of technology is headed to the market from other manufacturers.Ĭonsidering Sea-Doo's past pattern of mixing various power plants and hulls, the introduction of the GSX RFI really comes as no surprise. Still, combined with the rerouting of the exhaust outlet through the pump cavity, a change that was made on all of Sea-Doo's boats last year, the casings and insulation alone would offer a significant drop in sound levels compared to past models. For 1999, the casing has changed some - the material is a new rubberized plastic and the casing is split vertically rather than horizontally for easier assembly.
Other aspects of the total system have been easier to transfer to each model, however, including the insulation and casing on the mufflers and the various composite parts used in the engine. (On the GSX models, they've only been able to squeeze one four-tube resonator, while on the GS and the GTi, they have only one three-tube resonator. On the GTX models, Sea-Doo has been able to squeeze two lower four-chamber resonators into the footwells, which in turn offer the greatest reduction in sound. The waves bounce off the back of the tubes and then cancel out incoming waves, thereby suppressing much of the noise at those specific frequencies. These resonators are designed to suppress specific low frequency sounds and look something like the pipe area on a pipe organ, with different length tubes attached to the exhaust pipe into which sound waves pass. There are a number of reasons for the variance, but one of the biggest is that available space in the engine compartments has limited the number of Hemholtz Resonators Sea-Doo can fit in the different models, and the Hemholtz Resonators are at the heart of the D-Sea-Bil system. The system does it by borrowing a variety of different techniques and technologies from the automotive industry to reduce the sound level on all of the models in Sea-Doo's lineup.Īlthough not all models will get the same amount of noise reduction, each will offer significant improvements over last year. From a public relations standpoint alone, the D-Sea-Bil system helps everyone involved in the market from consumers to Sea-Doo's competitors because it addresses the major complaint from the public at large against personal watercraft - noise levels. Sea-Doo deserves a great deal of credit and praise for the inclusion of the D-Sea-Bil system on all of its boats this year.
There's more change here than meets the eye. So scoff all you want and say the new Sea-Doo lineup is only more of the same. It may not be a large, dramatic one, but it is another step toward meeting and exceeding the stricter EPA standards that are coming up. In fact, Sea-Doo engineers estimate the individual models are anywhere between 10 to 30 percent quieter than last year's models, and who knows how much quieter than models from three or four years ago.Ĭonsider, too, that Sea-Doo now has a second model with electronic fuel injection and has improved the fuel economy and reduced emissions throughout its lineup by fine-tuning the carburetion and calibrating the jetting on all the various models. Since all nine models in the lineup now include the revolutionary D-Sea-Bil sound reduction system, Sea-Doo now boasts the quietest lineup of personal watercraft ever assembled. On top of that, the only new model in the lineup - the GSX RFI - isn't really all that new since it runs on the three-year-old GS platform and uses the same fuel injection system that debuted on the 1998 GTX RFI.īut forget about brand new, never-seen-before technology for a moment, and consider the 1999 Sea-Doo lineup from a long-range perspective. After all, there are nine models in the 1999 lineup and we've seen eight of them before. You cynics out there can pass the 1999 Sea-Doo lineup off as more of the same-old, same-old.
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