Thursday, February 7, 2013

Panther in the garage

My '71 Arctic Cat Panther 303 Wankel hasn't had any love in several years now so the other day I hauled it into the garage. No spark, again... We went through this a few years ago and I managed to clean the points with contact cleaner. I tried that again 2 years ago but got nowhere. After my success with the Polaris I figured I'd give the Caig Deoxit a try here too.

Just as a side note this: Deoxit Contact Cleaner Mini Spray UPS Ground Only (Google Affiliate Ad) is an ad but honest to goodness Caig Deoxit is the best contact cleaner I've ever used. Supposedly it leaves a preservative film, we'll see how the points work on this sled next summer.

Anyway I sprayed the stuff on and swiped a piece couple pieces of card stock through the points a few times. They were much less dirty than the Polaris was that much I can tell you. So throw the flywheel back in and we've got spark, easy as that, score for Deoxit.

No go on anything else though and the primer pump won't pump so I bought another pump (every single year I need at least one) and later some more hose, the 1/8" hose doesn't seem to last as well as 1/4" fuel line does. Got the primer priming and the sled lights right off. It won't stay running unless I pump the primer though so the carb has to come off, right now it looks like this:


I think the only problem it really had was a sticky needle but I've decided to clean it good anyway, besides one of the gaskets tore as I was taking it apart. I drilled out the welch plug and hosed everything down in carb cleaner and scrubbed with a toothbrush. Some of the crud is really baked on, I need to go back with a brass brush but its a lot better. I left the needle and seat soaking in some carb cleaner, tomorrow I'll toss them in my ultrasonic cleaner, the carb body is too big for my cleaner, some day I should upgrade, the ultrasonic cleaner is the bomb.

My fingers got really cold from using the carb cleaner so I quit, tomorrow I'll get everything back together and should have a running sled.

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