Tuesday, March 4, 2008

The down day

Saturday was the down day last weekend, everything fought me every inch of the way. The idea was to ensure the TX-L was running correctly so I could take it up Kmart hill. It wasn't running correctly, it kept quitting on me, just like before. I noticed frost on the fuel shut off and thought maybe it was getting gas leaked onto it so I decided to replace the gas lines down to the pump. I found that the filter was kind of gunky so I replaced it too. Everything was going fine I was taking my time and zip tying the lines on. Then I got to the tank itself and the port going into the tank which is plastic broke off... Enough stub was left on that I could hook up my siphon hose and drain the tank into a bottle...
Fortunately Randy had a tank from a Puma (I think, a Cat anyway) that had a metal port. I put a wrap or two of teflon tape on and threaded it in. I also put on a new pickup, the old one didn't have a check valve. I don't think thats a big problem on this sled except when parking on an upslope. I've noticed in those cases you loose suction from the tank and the sled can be hard to start.
Anyway with that all installed it took a squirt of go juice to get the sled to start, thats never a good sign. When it started it roared to maximum rpm, also not a good sign... I shut it down with the kill switch before it could take off. Perplexed I cleaned the carbs, it does seem like one needle had some crud on it and may have been sticking open. Perhaps the belly of the engine is full of gas. With the carbs back on my problem was unchanged...

So now I need some time to pull the impulse line and pump the gas out... Its very warm today, in the 50s and heavy rain is predicted. With luck I'll get to this just in time to not ride any more for the season... :(

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