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...

Riding 2021, Jag repair

 I think it's been 3 years since we went for a real trail ride. The registration on the '98 Jag ran out last year anyway...

So a couple weeks ago when the snow was still good Angie and I got the two Jags out for a rip.

We had groomed the night before so the trails were really good. The snow wasn't great but what snow was was flat. We did about 20 miles just around the park, I had updated the registrations but as it was kind of late in the season I didn't get trail passes. As a board member I'm allowed a free trail pass but I've only taken one once. That was the year we rebuilt the track on the Pisten Bully and Ben wouldn't take my money. The club still has to pay for the pass and we're not exactly flush with cash.

Angie rode the old '91 the whole time, it was smooth enough that the lack of suspension wasn't a problem. I think I'll look for a Z or ZL machine with a blown engine and swap the suspension into it. The machine is a little lighter than the '98 and the dual carbs make a little more power.

The '98 ran like crap, it would spit and pop and fart and just had a terrible time. I had an inkling that the problem was the throttle safety switch. There are two little bushings where the pin that holds the throttle lever on are so I replaced them. I really miss having a shop just down the street to get parts like that.

Arctic Cat calls these "seals" and you can see that they're kind of chewed up. The new ones didn't make any difference though so I pulled the connection. Arctic Cat is interesting, they used 2 different electrical systems. Some are "normally open" which means there is an open circuit and to shut the sled off you close the circuit and ground the coil. Then a bunch of them are "normally closed" so the circuit powers the coil and you open the circuit to shut the machine off.

My '91 Jag is "normally closed", when the throttle switch failed on that and the previous owner wanted to jump around that switch he had to add a little jumper. The '98 is "normally open" and so I could just unplug the kill switch plug which includes the throttle switch. 

With the kill switch unplugged the sled ran perfectly. For the first time since I've owned it I could bomb around the yard. Used to be the sled ran great on the trail but poorly in the yard, now its fine all the time.

I had hoped I could just pull the throttle assembly apart and just jumper out the throttle switch but in doing I managed to break the kill switch. The sled still runs but I don't like not having a kill switch. Fortunately replacements are available. Unfortunately they cost about 15% of what the sled is worth...

The snow is gone now anyway, so I don't need to worry about it right away. I'll probably fix it, I like riding the sled. I'd thought about getting a brand new machine to replace both Jag's but they did so well...

Dead Sled Wrenching again!

 Ahh dear readers you must think I've abandoned you. Well maybe I had but here's some dead sled wrenching content.

The first big snow of 2021 is here so Saturday and Sunday I took some time to get things going.

I started with the two Arctic Cat Jags. Last year I had the '98 going although we never had any snow so I figured I'd start with the '91 this year. It was wicked cold when I dropped them off the trailer and I was disappointed when the '91 wouldn't crank at all. I stuck an electric heater under the hood and shifted my attention to the '98. It was simple enough to pull the plugs, squirt some gas down the plug holes and I was shocked when it fired up and ran on the very first pull. I did have to reprime before it would stay running on fuel from the tank and then the track really didn't want to spin but we got 'er going with relatively little fuss.

With that little accomplishment I moved to the '91, the recoil still wouldn't make the engine turn so I grabbed the clutch and broke it free with little trouble. I've seen this before where a little condensation gets into the jug and since it was so cold that ice held it a little. With the engine free I yanked the rope and, it stayed out... Blarg, a little Kroil fixed that and I shot a little more into the engine to lube it up. A little gas down the plug holes and this one also fired right up. I gotta say I love how the wedge Jag's go, they're lighter and snappier than the newer machines. I suspect the dual carbs on this one help too.

Flushed with success I moved on to the '79 Polaris Cobra. I haven't run this machine for several years, in fact I see my last post was working on that machine and it was very nearly 2 years ago. At that time it had no spark and I failed to fix that.

Well here is one of the culprits, this is the rear set of points. I don't remember which cylinder they're for, it doesn't really matter, they were both dirty. It was hard to get a picture but you can see how they're kind of greasy, what you can't see is that they were also kind of green. I tried my usual trick, Deoxit and a business card. While I could get the business card to come out dirty it didn't seem like things were really improving so I resorted to a file. Harbor Freight sells a nifty little file set that isn't marketed toward filing points but they're the right size and shape. I scraped on 'em a little bit, then sprayed off the residue with cheap contact cleaner, then repeated with Deoxit. Then got frustrated and quit for the day. Actually I shouldn't have been frustrated, we went from absolutely no spark to a little blip. It might not seem like much but thats improvement.

So yesterday I went back out, filed more, cleaned more, etc. The frustrating thing is that the recoil and inner cup have to come off to get to the points so you have to put it all back together to test it. Anyway after two more cycles I put it back together and YOWSA we've got spark!

At some point Saturday I did have the forethought to take the airbox off and have a look inside.

Mr. and Mrs Mouse got evicted...

The nice thing about having the airbox off was to make it easy to shoot gas into the carbs. And thats where we got stuck again, it would pop on premix but wouldn't stay running. So I pulled each carb out of its boot, flipped it over, popped off the bowl and cleaned it and the jets. I also make sure the needles were moving. Surprisingly nothing looked too bad, a little schmoo in the bowl maybe but nothing to write home about. 

Put it all back together and it STILL wouldn't run, I mean it'd run for a second on premix but wouldn't stay running. I figured it needed more gas so I got a couple fresh gallons mixed up and, well blarg...

Finally in desperation I took the torch and heated each plug until it glowed red, stabbed 'em in, shot in gas one more time and sonofagun she took right off. This machine has always idled high and it still does. Maybe when we get some snow and I can run it some more I'll try to adjust it, I do have a carb synchronizer I've never used...

So everybody is running and moving, I really like riding the Polaris, its light and geared low so its quick off the line although it runs out of snort pretty quick. The brake isn't working but thats just the fluid leaking out after sitting a couple years. I'll top it up and it should come right back.

If you've always wanted a Polaris Cobra (or one of the Jags) let me know, you could have this one. Its been a fun sled but I'm ready to play with something else for awhile. I'm open to trades even...

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.

Broken Groomer Part 1

Well, its not a dead sled but groomers are not without troubles.

Early on last season Ben had trouble with the Pisten Bully, none of the hydraulics at the front of the machine would cooperate. He couldn't lift the blade or manipulate it in any way. A little investigation revealed water in the hydraulic oil. After running the engine for half an hour or so the fluid would warm up enough so the water would go liquid and everything would work until the next time. This, of course, was a big issue. We swapped the fluid (its actually Automatic Transmission fluid, ATF) from the reservoir but the lines and pistons still had significant water. It was looking to be expensive (and a lot of work) to swap all the fluid when I hit upon an idea, could we boil the fluid to drive the water out? Thus began the saga of the weirdest thing I'd ever done with a Coleman stove:

In the post script we actually pulled and replaced the fluid 3 or 4 times, we'd draw the fluid out, boil off the water, let it cool, put it back in the machine and let it cycle for awhile and then repeat. Actually to be 100% honest we had 2 sets of fluid so I could be boiling off water while another batch was picking up water. This seems to have cured the issue, we also pulled the filter out of the fluid and actually submerged it in boiling fluid to get the water out of it, I think that helped a lot, I suspect water had gotten trapped in the filter and was being slowly released back into the dried fluid.

Chris and Harold, meanwhile, had both had trouble with tracks on the Northern and Southern Tuckers. I guess I haven't mentioned the Tuckers. When most people think "Snow-Cat" they're thinking of a "Tucker Sno-Cat". The club owns two, here's a terrible picture of the Northern Tucker.

I've heard a Tucker called "Farm equipment with delusions of grandeur. As near as I can tell its a 1 ton, rear engine pickup with tracks. They make several variations for personnel carriers but ours is the common type, its bigger than my ASV but smaller than the Pisten Bully. Power comes from a Cummins 4BT, the drivetrain is an automatic transmission with essentially 2 rear axles, the front axle pivots to steer.
I don't have much experience with them but so far the weak point seems to be the tracks, we replace/repair a lot of tracks on our Tuckers, like 2-3 a year.

Anyway with Ben, Chris and Harold all having troubles I was pretty pleased to get to the end of the season having zero breakdowns and feeling pretty smug, sadly that smile would get wiped off my face all too soon.

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.

Gas tank welding

Went for a ride on Saturday and discovered that the repair I'd made to my '91 Jag's gas tank filler neck was insufficient. It leaked gas on my left foot the whole ride. Relatively safe, the exhaust is on the other side ;)

Anyway today I finally had a chance to attack the problem. I got a Harbor Freight plastic welding iron and began by cleaning the crack with the included wire brush. Then I repeatedly stabbed the iron into the plastic perpendicular to the crack. My idea here was to essentially stitch the crack back together:

That worked pretty well and when I was done I could no longer see a strong flashlight shining through the crack.

Then I took some of the filler material that comes with the iron and worked it into the repair. I'm hoping it'll add some strength. Fortunately theres a groove there anyway. Here I'm partway done:

I ran the filler material over all of the damaged part. I left the undamaged section alone, I may live to regret that...

Tested by putting in a few gallons of water, holding my hand over the filler hole and flipping the tank upside down. If I can manage to not screw it up during install it should be okay:

Right now its got a quart of denatured alcohol (all I had on hand) in it to absorb the water. I'll get more alcohol later today.

As a measure of safety I rinsed the tank with water yesterday. I'd tried to have the filler neck full of frozen water but couldn't get the water to stay in long enough to freeze. I did all the work outside, there was a good breeze and the ambient temp was below freezing. I wore a full face mask and had an extinguisher nearby. I sat in the middle of the driveway away from anything flammable and of course had lots of snow on hand.

Overall I consider this a success, I didn't get blowed up, in fact I never felt like I was really in any danger, no sizzling or fire of any kind...

Wrenching in the cold

Still no snow going into January and of course the guy's on Facebook are losing their minds. Relax fools we haven't had ride-able snow in central MA before the last week of January very often.
Today its cold, like 3F at 7am and just cresting double digits by 11am which is good, with no ice on the lakes and the ground not frozen even if we got snow it wouldn't do us any good...

The other day I tried and failed to get the '79 Polaris Cobra going. That thing is wicked hard on plugs, it'll wet one and nothing I've tried will make it ever like that plug again. It had a set of BR8ES NGK plugs in it which is what it calls for, the BR8ES is one range hotter than the BR9ES you see in most newer sleds like my Jags. Since its a points ignition I theorized that a B8ES plug, not having a resistor, might help give a hotter spark. My local Advance Auto (formerly Car Quest) had B8ES plugs in stock cheaper than I can order them from Amazon. I bought a set as a test and so far things look good, the sled fired right up and idled nice. Would it have done that with resistor plugs? I don't know... I've also bought a carb rebuild kit, I have a suspicion that the mag side carb needle and seat are leaking a little and letting gas into the bottom end of the engine while the sled is shut off which is why the plug is sometimes wet. The next warm day I'll toss that in there, fortunately I've got a gas shut off on it to mitigate the problem for now.

Then I FINALLY got around to putting the airbox in. Last year I snagged a complete airbox off eBay, it was filthy so I cleaned it up and just never got around to installing it. It didn't come with any mounts so I took a pair of hose clamps and cut a notch in them to fit around the boss on the carb, slipped the box in place and tightened the clamps.

Theres really nothing holding it in place which is pretty normal for a vintage sled. There is a little metal bracket under it though so I think I'll measure the space to that bracket and get a piece of hose that just fits between the airbox and the bracket so the hose can be a buffer. Then maybe wrap a piece of wire around the hose and the airbox so it can't bounce around. My experience riding this machine is that it bounces a lot...

Next step for the Cobra was to try out the new cover I got for Christmas:

Cobra on the left, '98 Jag on the right, '95 Ski Doo in the background under a tarp.

Traditionally I've used tarps but the '91 Jag came with a pretty nice cover. Using the cover last winter I realized how much nicer it is getting a cover on than fighting with a tarp, we'll see how they last, they're about 4 times as expensive as tarps so I think I'll end up using the covers only for wintertime storage where I'm taking them off frequently, in the summer I'll continue to tarp everything.

Thats more like it

December when ones mind turns to snow. Sadly its not cold and theres no snow yet but whaddya gonna do?

Last weekend I tried firing up the '98 Jag but she was a no go. I farted around troubleshooting for awhile and finally found that the fuel pump was failing to chooch. This was a big setback, I'd intended to spend the day replacing the track but ended up troubleshooting the day away...
I guess this finally makes the '98 fit in around here, getting its chance to be a dead sled.

I was ordering Christmas presents on Amazon anyway so I added a Mikuni square, single output pump kit to the order. Tonight I finally had time to get the kit in place. Turns out the square single output pump is REALLY simple. There are 4 screws to take it apart, 2 gaskets and a diaphragm and that is it. I replaced a couple fuel lines while I was there, its amazing how long the original lines last. I put some tygon (yellow) lines on, we'll see how they last. The clear hose is usually the worst, it gets hard and doesn't seal. Blue is second best and yellow is supposed to be the best, we'll see. I need to get some clamps, they didn't come with them stock but you might remember a couple years ago on the trail with my El Tigre when the fuel line came off one carb. If I'd kept pressing on when that happened there could have been a nasty fire...

Anyway I got it all buttoned up and on the 15th crank just as I was about to lose hope it fired up. Ran rough for a little while but finally smoothed out. I think there might have been a hint of this problem last spring when I bought the sled, it would run but would occasionally stumble and the sled would about pitch me over the handlebars, now its much smoother. Next step is to put it on the trailer and get it over to buddy Chuck for a track replacement. I dunno what the previous owner did but the track is missing a bunch of lugs, looks like somebody got after it with a hot knife.

Earlier in the day I'd gotten the '91 Jag running, that one also needed about 15 pulls but no other real work. I think it needs some clutch work, it was awful hard on gas last winter. I'll ask Chuck to take a look at it too. Last Monday I got a SAM pass for it so that sled is ready and legal to ride. The '98 still needs to be registered, I'm hoping this Friday I'll get a chance to run down to Worcester...

Working on sleds in August?

So unlike me, I usually wait until it gets cold, then I have to rust to get stuff done...

Anyway last winter I tore the engine on the Pantera all apart and then lost interest since it snowed so much. Now I'm back to working on the tin.

Initially I tried to cheat this and paint it a bunch of times with high build primer and that did take out some of the rust pits but it would have taken a year of painting and sanding so I finally mixed up a bunch of bondo and filled the pits giving the whole surface a thin coat. I knocked that back and it it with the high build to fill the scratches from the 100 grit sandpaper I was using. Bondo clogs sandpaper bad but 100 grit works better. I need to knock back the primer with some 320 grit in a block and then I think I can prime it one more time and paint. I'm not looking for perfection here but something way better than what I had.

Need to do the pipe while I'm at it but I've found that high temp paint needs a good clean surface to stick to. I did my '70 Ski-Doo pipe back years ago and it just flaked back off quick...

Stupid trailer

Seems like I've had to fix my trailer just about every time I've used it this season, clearly its due for a major rebuild in the off-season.

You might remember last time the passenger side taillight fell off. This time it was the license plate which was fortunately held to the trailer by the wiring for it's light.
Heres an in-progress pic of the repair:

I actually had to do a fair amount of work for this one, the bracket that held the license plate was just gone, a piece about twice the size of a quarter was left along with one of the bolts that held the plate. I ended up having to cut that bolt (and the palm of my hand while I was at it) to get the plate back off.
The repair was fairly simple, I welded a piece of corrugated pickup bed repair steel to a piece of 1/8" flat stock, then drilled holes for the plate mount and welded the flat stock to whats left of the trailer. The welds are NASTY, there wasn't much to weld to but if you can't make 'em look good make 'em big so they won't fail.

In the end I actually made the corrugated part too big because I didn't pay attention to how the plate light I'd bought mounts:

I'd added the tab on the right to hold the light which actually mounts perfectly above the plate. Oh well, I'll fix it when I fix everything else. Using a big plate like this will keep the license plate from getting bent as much.

To weld in the plate I needed to remove the tail light and of course the stud spun, so I ended up cutting the nut that held it on so that had to be replaced as did the plate light.

Monday night I went to the snowmobile club meeting and on a challenge I decided to ride in. About halfway to the parking area I hit a big bump and the running lights went out on the trailer. The brake and turn signals still worked though. Since I didn't have far to go I just kept going.

Today I finally took time to figure out what was happening. The first step was to prove it wasn't my truck which was easy, put the meter on the plug at the truck and it was fine. So then I went to the trailer and removed all the bulbs with the meter connected and set for resistance. In a normal world the meter would read some level of resistance while the bulbs were installed and open circuit (1 on my meter) when all the bulbs were removed.

In the pic above the bulbs have been removed and the meter is still showing a connection. Since I had recently worked on the trailer I automatically assumed my work to be faulty. I pulled the new tail light and let it dangle from its wires, when dangling its not grounded so it couldn't be the short. When that didn't help I was starting to get worried about one of the wires where they come down from the hitch. I got under there and started looking around and thats when I noticed the running lights under the tail of the trailer. When I got under the tail I found the wire running to them had been pinched in a piece of angle iron that had been used to strengthen the failing rear crossmember. When they'd welded in the angle iron they captured the wire between sections of weld, what a dumb move.

Those running lights had never really worked anyway so I just cut the wire. They're in a crappy place, under the tail of the trailer so they get whacked on the ground when the trailer is tilted. When I rebuild the trailer I'll flush mount them to the rear of the trailer and weld a frame around them to keep them from getting hit. Thats how my last trailer worked and it was a pretty good system. I'll use LED lights which are thinner and less likely to get hit anyway.

Weld weld weld

I was going to ride Sunday as we'd had some more snow but I came out to find this:

whoops. It turns out my old trailer is pretty rotten underneath. The frame the springs attach to is solid but the pieces that span between that and the side rails are all bad.

You can see in this pic that the previous owner had done some repairs with pieces of angle iron in the past.

I'm debating if I replace this trailer or buy some steel and rebuild it. I'm pretty much 50/50. Ben has an enclosed trailer he's talking about selling. I'd been talking about an enclosed trailer anyway, it would keep my nicer sleds from degrading over the summer like they tend to do when left under tarps so that would be a good option. On the other hand if the only thing this trailer needs is three or four pieces of steel I'd be a fool not to replace them. At the very least it would make the trailer valuable enough to sell or take to camp where we could use it as a utility trailer. For now I won't be taking it very far from home.

Anyway I welded a strip of steel from the angle iron to the side rail and then welded the light mount to that. Its not terrific but it'll get me through the rest of this season.

With that done I spent some time welding up the pipe for the Ski-Doo. When I was riding Saturday it popped and got louder. I found a bunch of pinholes in the main pipe, mostly around places I'd welded before. That pipe is looking like the Frankenstein monster. I cleaned up those welds and added some filler. I also fixed a spring hook that had broken. I need to finish out by pulling the last part of the can and rebuilding its flange to the next piece up stream. I managed to do a similar repair on another piece that came out nice. If nothing else this kind of work helps me become a better welder.

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...

Progress!

Finally got my shipment from Dennis Kirk so work can progress.

The puller that I bought for the Pantera doesn't fit perfectly, the smaller 6mm holes don't line up perfectly with the holes in the magneto. Fortunately the larger holes line up well enough that the 6mm (grade 8) bolts would thread into the magneto. I added a little grease to the pulling bolt to reduce friction, then tightened it up. The puller has a cool little rod to keep the engine from turning. Or rather it USED to have a cool little rod to keep the engine from turning, that promptly broke off.

I barely put any torque on it at all. So I put the rope back in the cylinder and whacked the end of the puller a couple times. Then added a little more tension and "CLANG!" I thought I'd broken the puller but:

The magneto popped right off. While I was on a roll I bought a #3 phillips head driver, chucked it into a 1/4" socket and pulled the screws holding the PTO side plate on. I'd tried with a #2 phillips before but I couldn't apply enough torque to break the screws free.
Now I need to haul the engine back into the basement to replace the seals.

After taking the dog for a walk I went back to the Wankel Panther. I cleaned the mag side crank shaft really well and lubed it with axle grease, I also greased the shaft and held the o-ring in place with yet a little more grease.

I briefly considered some hylomar for holding the o-ring but was to lazy to go back into the house for it. The grease will melt out the first time the engine gets good and warm and won't cause any trouble. There was no o-ring there at all before so this has to be better...

The grease kept the o-ring in place perfectly allowing for easy installation which I strangely didn't get a picture of.

Getting the stator in place correctly took more time than I would have expected. I managed to get it not seated fully on one side which made the magneto hit, glad I rolled it over a few times before I buttoned everything back up. It turned out I had some wires trapped, once I got those aligned correctly everything went together easy.

I quit while I was ahead since I couldn't find my multi-meter. I want to check to be sure the points are opening before I button up the engine.

You take the good you take the bad

I realize I have been remiss in updating since SNOWMAGEDDON.

You might know that the east coast got hit with the "storm of the century" early this week. We live on what ended up being the western edge of the storm so while we got a good foot of snow it wasn't anything all that exciting. I got outside Tuesday and rode around in it some with my '91 Arctic Cat Jag 440. That thing is a terrific powder sled, its got the power and it floats good. Later that day I wanted to get the '79 Polaris Cobra out, it started up well enough but only went about 10 feet and wouldn't run right, the PTO head was cold. I figured it had lost spark and messed around with it for entirely too long (I actually cleaned the points) before I got my inline spark tester out and found that spark was fine. I messed around with it awhile longer before I gave up in defeat.

Fast forward to today and I got the chance to mess with it again. I pulled the plugs and they were nasty, greasy. I sprayed 'em with carb cleaner and wiped the electrodes and they'd spark again but the sled still didn't run. When I pulled them they were wet again. I dug around in the garage and found a set of new plugs (BR8ES if you'd like to donate some) and stuck them in, same deal although it ran a little on one side. One side firing isn't strong enough to drag the other side along.

Finally I remembered when I first got the machine that it'd flood real easy if I wasn't careful and I used to start it with the gas turned off. So I cleaned the plugs again and heated them with my plumbers torch. Then I rested them on the engine tin and with the plugs hooked up I cranked it a bunch of times with the gas turned off to clear out any flooding. I think the sparking helps clean the plugs too. Put 'em back in, turned on the gas and it fired right up.

Don't it look all smug?

So I ran it around the yard some, it was having a hard time with the powder but not too bad. I took it down to the trails. Google says I did just over 3 miles round trip which matches what the Jag said when I made mostly the same run on Tuesday. The sled ran perfectly, I did take the first bump on the trail too hard which felt like it compressed my spine. Last year Allen dragged a pallet back and forth on that section so it was groomed nice. This year he moved so no pallet and no smooth trail. I think I gotta find a pallet.

By the time I got home I'd figured out my powder snow riding technique. I needed to sit farther back on the seat, I was standing up and putting too much weight on the skis. With me sitting back where the hand strap is the sled goes like stink even in the deep stuff. Of course it makes it hard to use my weight to balance. I need to figure out a combination method where I kneel back on the seat or something...

Ruined!

Finally got the clutch back for the Wankel Panther, the guy did a good job, we needed to get a new stationary sheave of eBay, the one he had wasn't that great and we wanted it to be right but realistically it didn't take all that long. Which reminds me I should send him some more money.

So I headed out to the garage to put it all back together. Sadly when I got the correct size o-ring for the magneto side I'd crammed the crank seal on. This was a big mistake because:

• I hadn't cleaned the crankshaft on that side yet
• I hadn't lubricated the shaft although I had lubed the seal itself
• It was 10 degrees and the seal had shrunk

So what I accomplished was to tear the seal.

I went back and tried cleaning the shaft and lubing it but the damage is already done, the seal had rolled and torn. Its hard to get a picture of but if you look over by where the wires are you might be able to spot it.

That seal MIGHT work okay but I don't want to chance it. So I headed to Dennis Kirk and found they had one of the seals left. Since I ordered it they say "Part unavailable". So I better not screw this one up.

Okay so I'm stuck on that sled, better get the Pantera engine done. I've got 6 or 7 different pullers but none for the magneto on that sled. I'd bought a harmonic balancer puller for the Panther which worked great but the Pantera magneto uses 6mm bolts and the holes are very close together. I bought some 6mm bolts but they're grade 5 and I just managed to pull the threads off them.

This was a stupid kid mistake, I should have known better. The good thing about using grade 5 bolts is I didn't break anything important. It turns out theres a special puller just for this kind of flywheel. Runs almost $30. At least I was already ordering from Dennis Kirk so the shipping won't cost much extra...

*sigh*

Then yesterday with plenty of snow the '79 Polaris Cobra starts running on only the mag side. No power, spits and pops. I automatically figure its spark so I strip it down and clean the points which look clean anyway. Then I test it and it tests fine, spark on both side but now it won't run at all and theres no fuel in the filter.

I dunno on that one, I've got a couple crazy theories but I need time to look at it. Time I should have taken today but I got lazy.

Laugh at the idiot

As you know I've been fighting the clutch on my '78 Pantera for some time now. I finally got a new spring and pucks (Comet Duster) installed and then the dang engine was sticky, it'd only rock back and forth some. I thought it was maybe just from sitting although it'd only been a year, so I squirted a little oil in each side and worked it back and forth and it free'd up. So I put the plugs back in and tried to fire it up which is when it stuck SOLID.

Uh oh.

Today I finally got the engine out and found:

I'd been using a piece of recoil rope to keep the engine from turning while I worked on the clutch, I guess a piece got cut off on one of the ports and stayed inside. When I rocked it back and forth it must had slid out of the port but when I cranked it over it found the exhaust port. Now the thing is stuck hard so I think the only way to get it out will be to lift the jug. Guess I'll do a full gasket set while I'm there, it probably ought to have crank seals anyway.

The smart folks over at Vintagesleds.com along with the smart guys on the Okiebenz email list suggested I burn out the rope. with the exhaust manifold removed I can get right at the end of the rope. With it burned out I'd be able to crank the engine over and get the other piece out too. I've got a pencil torch so I can be precise about it. We'll see, I will of course take a picture and report.

While I've got the engine out I've got some work to do in the engine bay:

Years of accumulation in there, step one will be the vacuum cleaner. Because the engine sits so low its very hard to clean underneath it...

Also for once I managed to do a pretty good job packaging the pieces I took out:

It'd be all to easy to lose one of the bolts for the recoil or motor mount and then have to scab something in that would never be quite right...

First repair of the year

Since the welding on the Ski-Doo was actually done last year (slow reporting I know) this becomes my first repair of 2015. I fired up the Polaris Cobra today to buzz around the yard. We really don't have enough snow to ride but enough to play. I got it going and for some reason looked under the hood and got gas in my eye. Turns out the fuel line to the left carb was leaking at the pump, spraying on the clutch and getting thrown up in the air. SO glad I found it before it sprayed onto the exhaust and caused a fire. I'd like to think I'd have smelled it but who knows?

I cut a piece of hose from my siphon kit and put it on with new zip ties. Its okay but even this one is stretched a little. I need to find a source for some really good gas line, clearly the stuff I used last year sucks.