Ballast on Ski Supreme V220

Bought a 2008 Ski Supreme V220 which had been repossessed. Boat has 10 hours on it everything is great but I can't get the ballast tanks to work, is there any trick to get these to work. Anything will help.

I have the V208. Can you hear the ballast pumps working when you flip the switches? If not check the fuses (main fuse in the starboard side storage and fuse panel under the dash).

yea I turned the pumps on and I could hear them and feel them so the pumps are working, there just isn't any water coming into the tanks.

There isn't a great way for me to see what is coming into the tank though, so I've left it running about 5 minutes or so then tried to pump some out and nothing happened. The boat is new so I didn't know if there were any valves that needed to be opened or anything like that.

When you say new repo,you're saying it is a dealer repo that you bought as a new untitled boat?If that's the case it's under warranty,contact Fineline and ask them where in your area you can get service on it.Can you see any of the pumps?Do you have the Attwood Tsunami ones?If so they don't fill well while the boat is moving from my experience with my '07 Supreme.

My 2007 V208 doesn't have any valves but I will say from experience that the boat has to be sitting in the water, not moving to fill the tanks. Only way to tell if they are filling is to watch the swim step get lower in the water. You won't know if it's full till it comes out the overflow.

As an option, you could always disconnect the line on the pump just to make sure that water is going through it.

I looked and the pumps are Jabsco. Do you know if the valves under the boat suck the water in and pump the water out, and the holes on the side of the boat are strictly vents. I may not be giving it enough time and I've always watched the side vents for dumping.

We always had a prob with our ballast pumps on the Supreme that we had if its any consolation to ya

Since they are Jabscos it could be bad impellers.Also do your switches have fill and empty on them? If not maybe you are hitting empty instead of fill.Mine don't have fill or empty/drain on them.

The valves at the back of the boat suck the water in. The "vents" on the side of the boat are overflows (let you know the tanks are full) and the tanks dump out of them. You push the switches up to fill and down to dump.

I should have mentioned on mine each tank has two pumps, one to fill and the other to dump. The pumps closest to the bow are the fill pumps (at least on mine) and the ones right at the stern are the pumps that empty the tanks. Your problem might be as simple as you are turning on the wrong pump to fill it up (hopefully).

That makes me wonder a bit, several things on the boat have been miss wired so I wonder if maybe the pumps have been wired to the wrong side of the switch. When I hit fill I can feel the pumps on the stern of the boat moving. Where do I find the second set of pumps.

If you remove the covers over the ballast tanks (easy to do there are four screws on the floor) and look at the front of the ballast tank. You should be able to follow all of the hoses after the floor is out and determine what your fill and dump pumps are. Do you hear pumps when you push the switch down?

On the V208 the water comes in the transom holes and exits though the same hole. Also on the V208 there are just two pumps, one for the port and one for the starboard tank. Each pump fills and empties one tank. The overflow ports are just that, to show when the tanks are full!

After you open up the pumps... easy to do... and then go to a MC dealer and get the yellow impellors... and use those...

IN FUTURE... get in the habit of....

Fill ballast... after filling... quickly flip switch to empty then off... this puts the fins pointing in the right directing when it is time to empty them...

When you empty ballast... after you empty the ballast... flip the switch to fill then to off... so the next time you hit the lake to fill the ballast... the fins are pointing in the right direction to fill...

These pumps take a alot of power.. anything to help them turn over... helps...

I never have problems... but I know how my Jabsco pumps work...