Mistakes were made

Remember this little fella?

Our ASV DX4350 shown here heading south back in late January.  The first groomer I was ever trusted to run myself.

One of the ongoing issues with this machine has been starting. We thought we'd figured it when I installed synthetic oil a couple years ago. It still doesn't love starting in the cold but it'll do it. Until it wouldn't.

We got a big snow storm a couple weeks after the picture was taken. The machine was parked near the southern limit of our trail system and buddy Ben headed down to run it. Of course it wouldn't start, it'd just run to get down there, why would it start now?

Thus began the great heating. I wish I had pictures, they tarped it and shot a propane heater at it. They had a generator and heated the block but nothing.

I've had an idea for awhile now that there might be a problem with the shutoff solenoid in the injection pump. I'd had a similar problem with my '98 Jetta way back in 2014. 

Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to communicate this to Ben. He claimed to have tested it but I'm pretty sure he didn't or didn't do it correctly, which unfortunately led to this:

This is the starter from the ASV. Unfortunately I didn't get a before picture, its is after I "repaired" it. I'd call this a field expedient repair. That little screw you can see is holding the wire to the ring terminal which brings power from the starter solenoid into the starter. Ben had cranked on the starter so much he'd melted that wire clean off...

After wrestling with what to do I eventually ordered a new one. Its a DB Electrical unit, made in China. I didn't feel great about ordering it but it was less than half what a replacement from ASV would be and arrived in a couple days.

I didn't actually do the installation, fortunately the club has some real mechanics who had it installed in a jiffy. Honestly this starter sounds great and spins the engine faster than the old one. I think that ongoing starting issues had seriously wounded the previous starter.

So on to the issue that got us here in the first place. On the injection pump itself is a little magnetic solenoid that shuts off fuel. For some reason power is not going from the key to the solenoid. As a field expedient fix we ran a wire directly from the battery to the solenoid and the engine fired right up.

I groomed the machine back from the southern end of our trail system to the north with that field fix and everything was great. On a later run something happened and caused the fuse we'd put on that wire to pop. 

This is why you use fuses folks, if that dead short had caused a fire back in the woods it'd have been bad. Eventually we determined that the short was in the original wiring from the key to the solenoid. We worked around it by just eliminating that wire. So now the only thing connected to the solenoid is my fused jumper wire. The machine made 2 more runs like that.

Long term the ASV needs to come back to my house. I'm going to run a new wire from the key switch to the solenoid. I want to restore the ability to shut the machine off from the cab. The wiring in the ASV is a bit of a disaster so I'll take some time to clean that up too.

More to come...

Oops

 Hey gang,

I haven't done any Dead Sled Wrenching this year but I've been working on groomers a lot. I'll make another post in a day or two but this one is fresh in my mind.

Last night I took the Pisten Bully out:

Ben, the regular operator is off riding which is how I happened to be in the machine. Normally he is the only PB operator.

We made some nice trails until the machine started acting up. We've been having intermittent problems with the drive and of course it happened to me. When I took the picture the machine was at full power but just creeping along. At another point it was stopped entirely.

I was thinking about how to work on the problem when I made a horrible realization. When loading up I'd put my toolbox on the driver's side track and gone back to the truck for the chainsaw. Then I realized that since I was alone I could put the saw on the passenger side footwell, which is when I forgot about the toolbox.

Then I drove off.

I'm not sure how much the machine weighs but it squashed my Harbor Freight 301 piece tool kit like a grape. It must have been interesting to see, it looks like the tools must have squirted out of it. I found most of the sockets but I didn't see any screwdrivers...

I bought the kit when I first started as an operator in 2018. I'd lost a couple sockets but otherwise it was pretty much perfect.

Guess who is going to Harbor Freight to buy another toolkit?

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...

A new whip

 Well, a new-to-me groomer. The former operator left the club so we needed to shuffle around a little and I drew the short straw. Fortunately we had been training another operator and it made more sense to put him in the ASV which parks with the Pisten Bully. That way if he had trouble Ben would be close by to help.

Anyway this beast is a 1989 Tucker Sno-Cat 2000.

It's got a Cummins 6BT like a Dodge pickup and as you can see, 4 tracks.

I've heard it called "Farm equipment with aspirations" and that's not wrong. It's an interesting beast but not without issues. The drivetrain is really simple, the 6BT mates to a 3 speed automatic transmission and single speed transfer case. The axles are, I think, Spicer truck rear axles that pivot at the centerline of the axle. So the tracks are firmly attached to the axle and the whole axle moves. Both axles pivot so its effectively "four wheel (track) steer". This one in particular has something wrong with it and steers really hard at the limits, it also doesn't seem to steer as far as our other machine. I don't know what the issue is but its annoying.

I had terrible trouble with it icing up early on. The output of the fuel tank is right in the very bottom of the tank and I think it had some water that settled there. That water froze and in cold temps the machine would just barely run. The first time I took it out it took half an hour or more to get it warmed up enough to go out. Fortunately that run seems to have cleared the blockage. Before the second run I changed the water separator and fuel filter and it ran fine.

Some chucklehead took a side by side out in wet snow, this was real fun to fix

Driving is an odd experience, the automatic transmission has its work cut out for it making shifts with all the drag of the machine. A few times I've been fooled into thinking that we were losing power when in reality I just needed the machine to downshift. The 4 tracks are *relatively* nimble as long as you're going forward, it'll slalom fairly well. The 4 track system is nowhere near as nimble as either of the 2 track machines we have though and it's REALLY slow in reverse. I plowed snow with it one day and it took forever. I'd have been better off getting the ASV started, waiting while it warmed up and then plowing...

The most positive thing is that it's fast. It'll pull a pretty good load of snow at 10mph where the ASV can only do serious work in slow gear, 5-6mph. This is important for the run the Tucker is assigned which goes from Winchendon, MA to Barre, MA. The first trip was down and back and took something like 9 hours. That one we had to open a bunch of gates and of course deal with the machine being frozen. The second run I only went one way and made it in about 4.

Angie went on the second run with me and said she liked the Tucker more than the ASV. I'll put that down to it having been years since she was in the ASV...

End of the season

 Well, at least we had some season this year.

The other day Ben and I went down to put the machines to sleep for the summer.

We take the drags off so the machines take up less space and leave parking for dog walkers and other woodland adventure types.

It had been really cold the night before so I hoped that the ground would be pretty hard but as you can see on the ground it really wasn't. The Pisten Bully with its steel cleats really chews up the sod. Since its a shady area the grass isn't really all that thick. I'll go back with a rake in a day or two and clean it up a little more but compared to last year this is great. Last year I couldn't get the ASV drag into its spot for the life of me, I ended up chewing great ruts in the ground. Of course I took the drag off in May...

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...

Back to the Polaris

I got an email from longtime reader Vanessa a couple weeks ago. Her Panther 303W had no spark so I sent her my procedure for cleaning points.
In a nutshell: Get a can of Caig De-oxit, open the points, squirt in some de-oxit, let it sit for a minute, pull strips of paper through until they come out clean, repeat.
Vanessa replied that she got spark bag and now has a running machine, sweet, score one for the good guys!
So yesterday I decided I'd get a snowmobile running, we really don't have any snow and theres none in the forecast (50s tomorrow...) but what the heck, maybe the snow gods need a sacrifice.

This is my '79 Polaris Cobra 340. When I first bought it there was no spark, I cleaned the points and got it running, then a couple years later put in new crank seals. This one has always been a little finicky to start if its been sitting awhile and since I didn't run it at all last year I knew it was going to be a challenge.

Right off the bat no spark on the mag side so as you can see in the picture I proceeded to clean the points which resulted in? No spark at all...

Rats.

This sled has always been sensitive to plugs and it uses B8ES which I don't seem to have in stock. I'm going to order a box of them this time...

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.

Holy Toledo!

I can't believe its been so long since I posted over here, how time gets away from me...
I also notice almost all the pictures are gone. In case you didn't know a year or so ago Photobucket decided people need to pay them some absurd about for hosting pictures, it was something like $300/yr. They did it all of a sudden and I basically told them to take a flying leap.

Fortunately all the pictures are backed up, I've uploaded them to Google Photos and will spend some time restoring some of them. If you find a post thats missing pictures let me know and I'll see what I can do.

I'll also add some new content but unfortunately I haven't been doing much snowmobile related stuff at all. I rode exactly once last year although that was a really grand day out...

Odds and ends

I feel sorry for how few posts I put on here, there really hasn't been much to talk about.

So lets go back, during the short couple weeks we actually had snow I did get in a couple rides. First was the abortive ride when the '91 Jag was leaking gas. On that one we took a ride through an area where the trail passes through a deep cut in rock. Its old railroad line and a really cool spot. I got a picture there back in 2015:

What you can't really see in the picture is that right in front of the sled is a pipe or knee wall of some sort. When theres lots of snow you can ride right over and not know its there, with only 14" when we rode over there was a looong drop on the back side. I got the '91 up onto the bump and gently slid it over. I rode ahead a little and looked back, I saw the skis as Angie came over and thought she had it under control. In reality what happened is she grabbed a handful of throttle and stood the '98 Jag right up. When she landed she went over the windshield. She wasn't seriously hurt but got banged up and of course was really upset with me for "riding off without me". In reality I was gone for maybe 4-5 minutes, I looped around and back back behind her but she'd already ridden off. *sigh* lesson learned, look back more often.

There was enough snow for those two weeks that we groomed 3 times. I got more seat time than ever before but I don't think I did particularly well. I'm starting to tap the drag on posts as I go through and need to go slower and be more careful. I also haven't been utilizing the drag enough, I hadn't realized what an art there is to that. There needs to be enough snow in the drag to fill the bumps in the trail but not so much snow that the machine can't pull it. Also if theres too much snow in the drag it'll spill over the sides leaving boulders in the trail. The last time we groomed I rode with Chris, he works crazy hours and let me drive when he got tired. He promptly fell asleep and I made it my goal to run smoothly enough that he'd stay asleep. A goal like that helps me to become a better operator...

The last ride I took the 98 and went out on my own:

The '98 is a much more comfortable machine than the '91 at the cost of some speed. On the long straights the '91 maxes out at about 70mph, the '98 will only make around 60. Same 440 engine but the '91 is a little smaller/lighter and has dual carbs.
I think this summer I want to find a Z skid and track to put under the '91, with better suspension it'd be a sweet machine.

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...

A new season

After the washout that was the 2015-16 season I'm sure hoping for some snow this year. So far its been exciting and disappointing. Early season snow had things looking good and the Wednesday after Christmas I spent the morning putting up signs for the snowmobile club and the afternoon trying to get my old junk to run.
Right before Christmas I'd given it a shot and neither Jag would fire up. The '91 would pop a little but wouldn't stay running, the '98 wouldn't even pop unless I primed it with gas down the sparkplug holes. I figured dirty carbs.
The '98 has a single carb while the '91 has duals so I figured to try the single first. Access is tight but not impossible. The bowl had a soup of water and gas which was almost certainly the issue and although I did have to prime the engine with a shot of gas down the sparkplug holes it fired up and ran good. Its still got a weird bog but I *think* that might be because of how much sitting its done.

I ran out of light so the '91 waited until the next day. I pulled the carbs and found the filthiest bores I've ever seen...

See the schmoo down at the bottom of the bore? There should be a hole there, the carb on the left was totally plugged I ended up soaking it with carb cleaner and running a welding torch cleaning rod through it until I could get it to come out clean.

 The bowl from the left side carb. Both were gross but the left side was worse.

So knowing that the carbs were nasty I knew I'd need to do something about where the goo was coming from. I couldn't actually see anything in the airbox but I knew there had to be something in there. To remove the airbox the gas tank absolutely has to come out, then the steering column has to be loose. To get the gas tank out the seat has to come off leaving me with this:

Well that escalated quickly huh? I just wanted to clean the carbs and now...

While pulling the tank out of the way I realized the bottom of the filler neck was cracked. I wonder if this is why I was getting terrible gas mileage a couple winters ago.

So I got the airbox apart and evicted the mouse nest, and got it back together without breaking the old hardened plastic too badly. Then I ran some ThreeBond around the crack on the gas tank.

Threebond probably isn't the best stuff for fixing the crack but I cleaned the plastic good before I tried it and it seems to be holding well. The Threebond stays flexible and its strong against gasoline, we'll see how it lasts.

Finally probably the worst part of it all is that the seat wood is ruined and completely came apart. I'm kind of glad I found this now rather than bombing down the trail but I wish it hadn't happened at all. In retrospect the problem is I park my sleds pointed down hill which allows collected water to run under the seat rather than just running out.

A trip to the hardware store got a quarter sheet of 3/8" ACX plywood. The original stuff appeared to be 3/8" OSB but in retrospect (since the plastic trim doesn't fit) is probably 1/4"

The cut along the front is pretty important, it fits around the gas tank mount to hold the front of the seat down.

So I've got the seat base cut out and ready to go, the last step is to staple the base onto the seat and reinstall.

Meanwhile I got the carbs all cleaned and reinstalled and the sled fires up and runs nice.

Finally I wanted to at least try to prevent this from happening again or maybe mitigate the problem some. I got there by taping some hardware cloth over the opening to the airbox:

Thats quarter inch hardware cloth which is probably too big but its what I had. I usually use a couple yogurt cups of mothballs in the footwells. This spring I'll add more mothballs to the cup and I'll maybe add another cup under the hood.

No much happening but, the end of an era

So winter 2015-2016 is looking to be a washout. Probably to be expected really, we had 2 years of excellent snow, you can't count on greatness every year.

Obviously I haven't been doing much riding and having 7 sleds around doing nothing seems pretty absurd so last Saturday I finally said goodbye to an old friend, the 1995 Ski-Doo Grand Touring left the yard for the final time.

I accepted less money than I'd planned to but I still got better than 2/3 what I paid for the sled 7 years ago so I suppose I didn't come out too badly.

Friday I took the '91 Jag out for a spin, we'd gotten maybe 4" of snow and I just couldn't resist. The trails were rotten, the water holes had a skim of slush on them and were slippery as heck in the bottom, I had to keep hard on the gas to get through. The odo says I went 2.5 miles but I bet it was closer to 2 miles with half a mile of track slip. Still even a bad ride is better than no ride at all.

Finally I got the Wankel Panther going again. I'd gotten kind of disgusted with wrenching last winter and it was a challenge to get going again but I managed it. The change is nothing short of remarkable, the entire time I've owned it that sled was a challenge to run, I could never get it tuned well and it was just never happy. Once I got it back together and dealt with the fact that the gas line in the tank had melted it fired right up and ran pretty much perfectly. I think I could open the low needle just a little more but otherwise she's all set. I was so pleased I made a video:

Eventually I want to make a bunch of these where I show off the machine and take it for a ride, sort of like Jay Leno's garage but for snowmobiles.

Anyway, theres an update, we got another inch or two of snow last night so I reckon I'll get the '98 Jag out today and see what it can do. I've been fighting the carb on that one, it spits and dies. I think I had water in the gas so I finally bought an electric fuel siphon and drained the tank. With fresh gas it runs better but I think I need to go through the carb one more time. This summer I'll put a rubber glove on the gas cap in case its leaking...