Buying a cheap jetski.

Buy them used for sure

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My kids are at the age where this would be a good investment in keeping them motivated to have lake days with us.

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I see where you are coming from and really appreciate it. We had a lot of good teenage days at the camp with our parents on a big lake. My parents invested a lot of time and money in stuff like that but also used it to teach us responsibility regarding money, repairs, getting carried away, drinking, etc...

You might consider making it part of a bigger eco system. We had a lot of fires, cooked outside all the time, volleyball net (no top gun jeans n stuff), fire pit, an old VW to work on, a small barn full of bikes and stuff...

Lake days in my teen years were great and my friends were very involved, too. We really avoided the "my parents aren't cool" issue due to their involvement and interest.

On top of the jetski you may consider a blackstone and/or some sporting gear, perhaps a tent or such.

We had very little travel sports and it was great. Spent the money on more long terms stuff and really stuck together.

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There's been a jetski in our family for 20 years that folks have just passed around, and i havent seen any type of insane maintenance or repair bill. I'm pretty handy and diy oriented....i cant be at too big of a risk here, right? Seems like worst case, aside from splitting the hull in 2 is a full engine replacement....cant be all that expensive, right?

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well go to youtube and watch the videos on working on that model or one like it. they have videos for everything for doing maint. you will be able to see whats involved and there should be some videos telling buyers what to look for and what issues to watch out for

Man those things eat up fuel. We had two for a while. Run those all day and you will need Exxon stocks these days.

Anyone ever bought one of these? Seems kids would love it

Stay away from anything seadoo. Like others stated they like oil and gas. Yamaha and Kawasaki seem to have some solid older machines. They are fun, I have a lot of memories as a kid from riding jet skis.

In my experience they are a maintenance nightmare but easy to maintain and not overly expensive. They are pretty simply machines...if you don't mind tinkering on it. Depending on the kid and their level of interest and mechanical aptitude (if they can turn a wrench and know which way a pair of channelocks works) it may be just the ticket to get them interested in tinkering with motors etc. I had a CT70 Honda mini bike when I was a kid and to ride it an hour required about 4 hours, on average, of taking something apart and finding a way to fix it. I learned almost all I know about mechanicing (Not much LOL) keeping that thing on the dirt road. Not a lot of difference accept the cooling system. Might be good for a kid in more ways than one....