New guy with newly purchased 880 w/jet

[Mr_C]

Yesterday I purchased my first 6x6. It is an early fiberglass 880 (rear buckets instead of bench) with the jet option. The guy I bought it from used it for hunting. It appears that the person who owned it before him must have done quite a bit of restoration work as it is in overall quite good condition IMHO. Everything seems to be functional except for the brake, of which he said the cable broke. There are a few other tune up issues to do, but nothing major I have found so far. I unloaded it last night, loaded up the family and went tearing around my farm and it seemed to work quite well (once I got the hang of driving it). It does start hard when cold, but runs fine once it starts up, I am going to pull off the carb and clean it and rebuild the fuel pump (or possibly replace it with the same one as my hovercraft uses so I have more parts crossover..

It will be used mostly recreationally, but I do have a bit of a reoccuring flooding issue every spring (I am in MN) and my roads tend to go under. This seems like an excellent escape vehicle (my justification). That is why I was so keen on the jet option, suddently that will allow me to cross an area that has a moderate current without just getting swept down stream, or at least thats the theory.

I haven't had too much time to dig through it yet, hoping to get more time tonight.

[Mike]

Mr C, welcome to the site and congratulations on your purchase. That Hustler looks great. Let us know how the jet pump does when you try it out.

[LarryW]

Congrats on your new hustler. Looks pretty nice! Having a jet pump would be cool!
Welcome to the site!

[Mr_C]

Thanks guys.

I just did a little looking closer. Honestly, when I bought it I wasn't able to inspect the drivetrain very well and had poor light, but based on what I did see and how well it performed, I was reasonably confident in the rest. He said that the brake cable was bad, I looked and the rod is there and fine, but the caliper is not. I guess that explains the damaged caliper and bracket in the bucket of spare parts he gave me. He said that the jet pump worked well and that he used it when he would take it out hunting. I went through all the linkage and agree that it all does seem to be in good condition and functional. I was really glad to see that. One thing I was surprised about is that the lever worked opposite of how I expected, it runs when the lever is down and shuts off when the lever is up.

The current "to-do" list
- rebuild the carb as I think it is dirty and a little plugged up which is likely causing my difficult cold starting.
- Find an air filter for it (currently has none). Has a 3 bolts on the face to bolt a filter onto. I have no idea what the original filter looked like, any ideas?
- Buy/Replace the tube on one of the middle tires. Are these normally tubed? I would assume they are since they use such low pressure. The tires are Goodyear Rawhide 21x11-8 and are in fairly good condition
- Order a new fuel pump, not sure if the condition of this one but I would like to replace it to make sure (again, a hard start issue)
- Replace the burned out front headlight
- Put a new shear pin in the passenger side middle axle (it is sheared).
- Check the fluid on the T20

After looking underneath, all the chains seem to be in good condition and tentioned properly.

If I can get it starting well this weekend and the weather holds out I will try to find some water around here to test out the jet in. I am pretty excited to see how well that will work. If I do, I will video it and put it on youtube.

Any comments or advice is appreciated.

[amphibious drew]

Mr C,

Congrats on your new machine. Most of your list of what to do is right on target, however, I would not tube the tires. The skid stear will be too much force for the tube to stay in place. I use slime in the tires and I permatex them to the rims. I too am running the old rawhides.

[Mr_C]

Thanks Drew,

I was kinda questioning the tubed tire thing, but someone seems to have already done it on this machine. I will see if I can get this one to seal up without the tube since it is shot anyway, then I can start going through and fixing the other ones. I wouldn't mind drilling the rims and adding some screws for beadlocks also while I am at it.

[Shawn H]

Boy! that looks great. Hope you have fun soon. Let's us see some jet video.

[Mr_C]

I did some work to it this weekend and got a chance to try it out some more. One the "todo" list, I:

- Fixed the tail light
- Replaced the headlight
- Lubed the chains
- Adjusted tensioners on 2 chains
- Removed/Cleaned carb
- lubed cables
- replaced fuel pump with mikuni square pump
- replaced spark plugs
- replaced shear pin on one center axle
- replaced tube in one tire, realized I need to replace rim cause it is very rusty on the inside, therefor requiring the tube.

It seems to be working well, although I still have a carb issue. It still does not start well when cold, doesn't always idle down correctly, and may not have the wide open power that I think it should. I still have some tweaking to do on the carb, but I suspect that there is an air leak somewhere that is causing my starting an idle issues. Gonna look into that more later.

I did a test run and on the gravel road hit 23mph, I was hoping to see 30mph, but honestly at 23 I felt like I was going plenty fast enough (as it turns out, I had too much air in the center 2 tires, causing it to rock back and forth and making it more unstable). I think once I get the carb right it will have a little more top end. It did 20-21mph with 3 people in it.

Next I loaded it into my truck and brought it out for a test swim. I was quite nervous driving it into the water but it didn't end up leaking at ALL. I was very excited about that. I was surprised that it was more stable than I expected. It also road a little higher in the water than I expected.

As far as the Jet, I was a little disappointed. It did not give the propulsion that I was hoping for. I am not sure if that is just the way it works or if it something isn't quite right yet. I also spent most of my time turning, which slows it down quite a bit. It felt like the jet propelled me at about the same speed as the tires would, so if I used both the jet and the tires I went twice as fast. it also worked good to use the tires for propulsion and the jet for steering.

Anyhow, I am guessing what people really want to see is the video...







This was done on Saturday, by today the pond had ice over it, so I don't think I will be doing any more water testing until next spring (hopefully it will be voluntary and not due to flooding).

[amphibious drew]

Mr C,

Let me be the first to say quit your complaining about your jet drive. Holy crap that thing looked great in the water. Faster than most tire set ups Ive seen for sure. I love the way it whips it around in the water. Almost makes me want to find a machine with a jet drive myself. So much fun could be had. Anyway, the machine looks great so far.

[Mike]

Thank you for posting those videos. It was great to see the jet drive in action. I thought it moved along pretty good.