2025 was not our best year

 

You might remember my '78 Polaris Cobra, pictured here back in hapier times. Today the dang thing won't run because its got no spark on the MAG side. Generally I could get spark back if I cleaned the points some. Well this year that isn't working. So I figured it was finally time to throw some parts at the issue, so far I've replaced the external coils which didn't help at all. I bought, but have yet to install, new plug wires. Since this is a points machine the wires need to be copper core, not the new fangled graphite type. 

I think the real fix will be to replace the actual ignition power coil inside the mag. I got frustrated when snow was on the ground and just parked it up. I think I'm going to haul the machine to Maine and swap it with the old '70 Ski-Doo, that needs some welding on the frame and a gas tank clean but the repairs required are straight forward.

This is actually a more pressing concern. Adam and I took the ASV out to groom, this was back in mid February. We were just about as far south as we'd need to go when Adam commented that the machine felt down on power. Pretty soon we found that while the machine would go forward it wouldn't turn right.

We farted around with it on the side of the trail for a little bit but didn't find anything so we parked it up and walked out. It was nearly a mile out. Adam brings a backpack with nine thousand pounds of tools with him and as he was still recovering from surgery I got to lug that out.

The following weekend we went back with the Tucker and dragged it most of the way out to the road.

Turns out the machine can go straight ahead fine and turn left fine but can't turn right at all. This is good because the Tucker doesn't have enough power/traction to pull the whole combination up hill at all. So as we were hauling we'd start slowing down as Adam carefully adjusted the steering wheel to find the magic point where the machine would only go forward without trying to steer. The steering on this has always been sensitive and that didn't help. 

Overall I call this recovery a win, it worked way better than I'd expected.

Another weekend and we dragged the machine the rest of the way out and got it on the trailer. This was especially frightening because the trail looped around to the right so I ended up driving up on to the trailer and just hoping it was straight enough. Most of the trip onto the trailer I couldn't see anything but the plow and sky...

Now it sits in Ben's driveway where we've made a couple interesting discoveries. Mostly that it always turns left, forward or back. This means you can go anywhere you want but you need to do it as a series of left turns. Interestingly this tells me that both drive motors work correctly, to turn left going forward the right drive motor pushes forward. To turn left going backward the left drive motor pushes backward.

The left drive motor won't push forward and the right drive motor won't push backward.

Digging into it more we exposed the pump section of the system which, the manual says, has oil pickups for the pumps that feed the drive motors. The pickups are supposedly covered with screens so right now our best bet is to clean those screens. Unfortunately the screens are underneath 35 gallons of hydraulic oil...

Broken Groomer Part 2

It was the beginning of April, the snow cover was decent but the days were warm. We decided it was too warm to groom at night, the snow wouldn't move good so we made a plan to groom first thing in the morning, 6am. This would be our last day out, club picnic and the trails would close the next day so get the trails nice.

Everything south of Lake Dennison was already closed so just a quick run to groom the park. I only have one regular loop inside the park, Ben does all the rest but we figured after I'd done my normal loop I could pick up some of the other stuff. Mike was riding right seat, his second trip out with me, I had plans to get him some stick time.

Just as we turned onto the main drag I knew we had problems, little tendrils of steam. I'd never groomed when it was warm though and just passed it off for that but about the time I got the drag full of snow and grooming good the little tendrils became a big cloud, uh oh...

Looking under the machine I could see a geyser of coolant, I couldn't tell where from but it had to be a heater hose to the cab. We limped the machine to the beach where the picnic was to be held.

I didn't get any pictures but the cab tips up so the driver's door is about 4' up. With that tipped I could see a ragged hole in one of the heater hoses. Apparently this had happened to Chris the year before but on the other hose, he'd fixed that with a union connector. This time I used the same union to connect the two heater hoses together, topped up the coolant and drove it back to the yard...

A couple months later we moved it to my house. I wish I had pictures of it, the machine is heavy, like 9,000# heavy, too much to pull with a normal pickup. Glenn came with a 3 axle dump truck and trailer. The ASV looked puny on his big trailer.

 With the right seat out I could get to the heater, fortunately there are two unions right in the middle of the picture which were a lot easier to access than the heater core itself. I sent this picture to the other groomer operators with "That escalated quickly" as the caption.


I got a funny look from the parts guy when I asked for 18 FEET of 3/4" heater hose, apparently thats how much they normally sell each month. It took 17.5 feet in total...

These are the old hoses. Theres a hydraulic leak at the controls which drips down through the access hole below the cab and pools on these hoses which then deteriorate from the oil. I intend to fix the hydraulic leak, I think its just o-rings but I want to do it with help from somebody who really knows what they're doing, for now its not too much of a problem. I put a catch pan with a pig pad in it under the leak, hopefully it'll will prevent the new hoses from deteriorating.

A Groomer operator?

I went back and fixed almost 3 years of pictures, did you realize the blog is now almost 10 years old? I didn't...

Anyway something new and really the answer to why I haven't done much snowmobile stuff. You might remember back in 2015 when I was "Working with the Groomers" well last January Ben gave me a call "Can you get that ASV to start?" what a loaded question, remember I'd been in the ASV once, 2 years before. I gave him a "maybe" and headed over. 

We'd had some good snow and of course somebody had decided to replace the batteries in the machine but hadn't installed them. I plugged in the block heater and got to work on the batteries. 

Actually before I talk about the batteries let me mention the block heater. I'd been told a couple times it didn't work but I'm one of those "well let me try it" kind of guys. One thing I noticed is that the outlet we were using was GFI protected so I made sure it was set to on using my heat gun. Then after I plugged in the heater I wondered "How will I know if its working?" A couple years ago I'd tested it with a Kill-A-Watt meter but I seem to have lost that. On this day I used my infrared thermometer.

It was 6F outside, I figured if the block heater was 93F it had to be working. These days I just touch it, when its warm to the touch I know its good.

It is of course way more fun (sarcasm!) to repair something you didn't take apart so it took me considerable time to get the batteries in

You can see my heat gun in the foreground, that was the next step, I stuck it in air cleaner and waited until that was good and hot. It was really cold out and Ben was scared that I'd ruin the brand new batteries so I wanted to be sure this thing was going to start. A few minutes later I texted Ben

"We're in business."

And thats the story of how I became a groomer operator. It really how my life has generally worked, I'm usually the guy at the place that can do the thing. In this case my experience with driving (and starting) old Mercedes diesels was exactly what was required. The engine in the ASV isn't anything like an old Mercedes but the principle is the same and I knew I needed to get it warm to get it to start...

Anyway I don't want this to become a groomer blog but its closer to snowmobiles than anything else I've been doing and I don't want the blog to die from lack of content. Hopefully I'll find time to get the sleds out this year, in the meantime I hope this is good enough.