A little light Jag repair

The Jag has been a great sled but theres a couple things bugging me about it. One was a spot on the windshield I managed to crack with just a tiny tap on a tree. Today I took the time to put some packing tape on the crack.

This was more challenging than I would have expected because the Windex I was trying to use to clean the windshield before I taped it kept freezing... Got it there eventually and now I'm thinking that it looks good enough I might leave it that way. I'd been thinking I'd buy a new windshield but they're kinda expensive and will just get broken eventually... Maybe when I take this one off in the spring I'll re-enforce a little where I couldn't get to with it mounted but I think its staying.

I've also noticed the sled getting a little louder. Theres a gasket where the manifold meets the muffler and surprisingly Troy Arctic Cat actually had one so I replaced it:

New gasket installed

The old one didn't look too bad and I didn't notice much difference in my test runs but it seemed like it didn't get loud until I'd been riding for awhile. I wonder if the old gasket was letting exhaust by when it got hot...

Finally the kill switch doesn't work. Arctic Cat used a kind of pain in the ass system to shut the sled down if the carbs get stuck open. When I bought the sled it was bypassed with a nice jumper but I've had a couple cases this year where the carbs have been a little sticky and I'd like to have the kill switch back so I spent some time looking at it.

The system is interesting there are switches in the carbs and two switches at the throttle lever. One of the throttle lever switches is activated when the lever is all the way back, when you move the lever that switch opens and the other closes. The sled won't run if one of the switches isn't closed all the time. The idea being if a carb was stuck open the cable would be slack and neither switch would be active thereby shutting the sled off.

I spent a bunch of time playing with adjusting carbs because I thought I was getting caught in the transition period between one switch opening and the other closing. It turns out the first switch is never closing:

If you look directly below where the cable mounts to the throttle lever theres a hole. That hole is directly against the first switch (visible to the right of the ferrule the cable goes into) so nothing ever pushes against that switch. I've asked about it over at vintagesleds.com but I think what I'm going to do is find a set screw that fits into that hole and wind it in so that it just pushes on that bottom switch. While I'm at it I should see if I can fix the thumb warmer, that'd be nice to have...