Honda Foremen

I had Honda Foreman in the shop recently with an oil leak.  The leak was at a faulty seal on the output shaft coming out of the front of the engine.  The red arrow points to the spot where the lip of the seal is distorted.

To replace this seal the front drive shaft needs to be removed.  The drive shaft has splines on each end and "floats" between the engine and front differential.  The mounting bolts for the front differential are removed and this allows the diff to move forward about 2 inches.  Once the differential is moved forward the drive shaft will slide right out. 

Once the drive shaft is out of the way I used a pick to pry the old seal out.  On small seals like this one it is normally easy to pry them out.  Larger seals may be stuck tighter and require a little more work to get out.  I have a couple of examples of this here and here.

Once the old seal is out it is a simple matter to clean the parts up and press the new seal in.  A small seal like this can almost be pressed into place by hand.  It only required a few light taps with a small hammer to seat it.  When driving it in you must make sure that is not bent or distorted. 

Arctic Cat 366 ATV

I have an Arctic Cat 366 ATV that had a faulty ignition switch.  For the last few month I have had to wiggle the key around to make the machine turn on.  It gradually got worse, until it would not work at all.  I assumed that there was a bad electrical connection in the switch.

I removed the large plastic nut from the switch, unplugged it from the wiring harness and brought it to the workbench.

Before I took the switch apart I marked both pieces in case there was any confusion about how they go back together.  I have found that a silver Sharpie works great for marking things like this.

When I pulled the switch apart the corrosion was obvious.

I used a small wire brush to scrub the corrosion off the copper contacts.  Some of it was very hard and required a little scraping with a dental pick type of tool.

Before reassembling the parts I coated the contacts with a little silicone dielectric grease.  This stuff is great for preventing corrosion, I put it on almost every electrical connection.

Once I reinstalled the switch the machine worked fine.



Teller Headstart Water Pump

The Headstart building in Teller has it's own water system with a pump to provide pressure to the building.  The setup is similar to having an on site well, but in this case the pump draws from a large storage tank.

Recently the pump quit working, when I inspected it I discovered that the impeller was broken.  I suspect that someone let the water tank run dry and left the pump running for too long.

Normally you can replace the impeller on these pumps easily, but on this one the heat wrecked the impeller and also some of the other internal parts. When I checked on parts there was going to be a long lead time and a lot of shipping cost to get them from the lower 48.  Luckily I found a complete pump and pressure tank in Nome that was an exact replacement.

The first thing I found in the box was a set of instructions that tell you to stare directly at the tank if  it explodes.  There was also a picture of a snake biting someones hand, or maybe that was something about electrical safety.

Since the new pump was a direct replacement all I had to do was switch the piping over from the old to the new unit.  In different parts of the country there are several types of pipe that are commonly used.  In this area potable water systems are normally plumbed with brass.  Brass is nice to work with and is very corrosion resistant.

Threaded plumbing connections need some kind of sealant on the threads.  Teflon tape works well for potable water systems.  Put a few wraps around the pipe and screw them together.  Teflon tape seals well and allows the joints to be taken apart easily if repairs need to be made.  There are also many different types of paste or dope for sealing pipe joints.  These also work well, but some of them harden with age and can be very difficult to take apart later.

Some of the connections in this system use unions.  A union allows you to put the pipe together without having to spin the assembly around.  The seal in a union relies on a cone shaped fitting pressed into a tapered seat.   

The arrow in the above photo points to the location of the tapered seat on the lower half of the union.  In a union the threads are only used to force the two parts together, they are not part of the sealing surface.  Because of this there is no need for a sealant on the threads.

Here is the complete union on the top of the pump.  In this photo you can see the Teflon tape on the pipe threads and the hex nuts of the union with no Teflon.

This pump assembly is connected to the pressure tank with a compression type packing gland with an o-ring in it.  Whenever I put an o-ring assembly together I like to coat the surfaces with a little bit of silicone grease.  This makes the parts easier to assemble and should keep things from sticking if it needs to come apart later.

The last step is to connect the wires to the pressure switch.  This is a very basic 110 volt connection, a green ground wire, a black hot, and a white neutral.

Here is the completed installation.

Arctic Cat 1000 TRV H2

A friend brought over an Arctic Cat 1000 TRV H2 with a broken drive belt.  This is Cat's big top of the line ATV, with a twin cylinder 1000 cc motor, two up seating and all the fancy extras.  He had already purchased a spare belt and I thought that it would be a quick easy job.

When I pulled the belt cover off and removed the debris from the old belt I found a small piece of plastic and a metal key for a shaft.  Obviously there was more trouble than just a broken belt.  I removed the secondary clutch and discovered that the helix was cracked.

This first photo shows the clutch on the work bench with an improvised setup to compress the spring.  I used a piece of all thread and a few metal scraps to compress the spring enough to remove the snap ring.

Here is the broken helix.  You can see that the part cracked right at the corner of the groove for the keyway.  This is a classic example of a failure at a stress concentration.

This machine has a powerful engine on a large and heavy chassis, I wonder if the Arctic Cat engineers did not design a drive system that is tough enough to handle it?

Water Heater

I recently had to clean out a sooted up oil fired water heater.  This first photo shows the inside of the heat exchanger after I was done cleaning it.  The heat exchanger is basically a large tube inside the water tank.  The inside of this tube has hundreds of these steel fins welded to it.  The oil burner is at the bottom of this tube and the hot exhaust flows up past all these fins and heats the water.

This photo shows the water heater.  In order to clean it out I had to remove the chimney from the top of the unit.  In this case the chimney was also tied in with a couple of boilers for heating the building.

When I first removed the barometric damper (the piece with the little door that flops around) from the chimney and looked inside this is what I saw.  The entire thing was plugged up tight.

After cleaning off the top and removing the core from the heat exchanger I could see that all of the fins were packed full of soot.  Compare this photo to the first one.  The cause of this all this soot is an improperly running burner.  Typically the nozzle wears out or gets plugged up, this causes the oil to burn erratically and produce soot.  Once a little soot accumulates in the heat exchanger it starts to restrict the air flow.  This restriction in airflow then causes the burner to run worse, this makes more soot and restricts the airflow further.  Eventually the whole thing ends gets clogged up solid and someone calls me to fix it.

I used a long wire brush and a shop vac to clean the soot out.  The wire brush has a long flexible handle that allows it to be pushed between all the fins from the top opening.  It takes a lot of scrubbing to get into every little space.

I also removed the gun from the bottom of the tank so that I could clean the soot out of it.  On this unit the oil lines are plumbed from a Tigerloop with flexible lines.  This allows the gun to be removed without disconnecting anything.

To avoid these problems you should change the nozzle and filter annually and if anything seems out of the ordinary have the burner adjusted by a qualified technician.

Fuel Oil Tank

All of the buildings that I maintain are heated with fuel oil that is stored in outdoor tanks.  Outdoor storage tanks are prone to collecting water from condensation.  Part of my fall maintenance plan is to check each tank for water. 

Water is more dense than oil so it sinks to the bottom of the tank.   To check for water in the tank I use a product called "Kolor Kut".  It is a yellow/brown colored paste that comes in a tube.  To use it you rub a little on the end of a dip stick and lower it into your tank.  In this case I am using an old piece of pipe for a dip stick.

When Kolor Kut comes in contact with water it changes to a red color.  In this photo you can see that the paste on the end of the pipe has changed to a pink color.  There is about 1/2" of water in the bottom of the tank.

On many older tanks there is a drain on the bottom of the tank that can be used to remove the water, but newer tanks normally only have openings in the top.  To get the water out of the bottom of this tank I used a Super Syphon.  The Super Syphon is a handy little one way valve connected to a piece of clear plastic hose.  It is a great way to transfer liquids from one container to another.  They normally come with only 6' of hose but I put a longer piece on this one to use it on large tanks like this.

To make sure that I got the siphon all the way to the bottom of the tank I connected it to the dipstick with zip ties. This allows me to move the siphon around on the bottom of the tank to make sure that it is in the lowest spot.  I have also used this technique to clean water or dirt out of the bottom of snowmobile gas tanks.  

Polaris Sportsman 500

I had a Polaris Sportsman 500 in the shop with electric starter problems.  It had a few corroded wires and loose connections between the battery and the starter solenoid and wore out brushes on the starter motor.

ATVs around here get used like automobiles in suburban America.  People make lots of short trips around town.  The engine gets started and stopped frequently.  This leads to a lot of wear and tear on starters and the electrical starting system.

This photo shows the brush holder assembly for the starter.  The brush on the top is completely worn out and the lower one is also getting short. 

I change these often enough that I keep a few spare brush sets on hand.  For some vehicles I have the complete brush holder assembly and for less popular models I have a few universal brushes that I can solder onto the original holder.  The universal brushes are cheaper, but the extra time to solder them on cancels out any savings.

C.O.

Busy Day

Some days I work on a great variety of projects.

I started the day by replacing the rollers in the clutch from a Yamaha Grizzly

Then I replaced a compressor in a freezer at the local store.

Before lunch I had a little time to work on one of my own projects.  I bent a few pieces of stainless steel to make a holder for the anchor in my boat.

After lunch I worked on a boiler in a home heating system.

I then traveled to the nearby village of Teller to fix a toilet.

After working on the toilet I used my boat to haul a load of lumber to Brevig.

Yesterday I got out of the shop and spent the day using my boat to haul supplies for a construction project.  A contractor is repairing a few of the roads in town and installing some culverts.  The contractor hauled their supplies by road from Nome to Teller, then they hired me to boat everything across from Teller to Brevig.

This photo shows two 24" diameter by 20' long plastic culverts in the boat.  I made several other trips with the boat and hauled more pipe, shovels, compactors, ATV's, etc.  There is a protected bay on the Teller end of the trip where we loaded the boat and a sheltered lagoon in the Brevig, but the 10 mile crossing in between was rather rough. 

C.O.

Honda Foreman

I have a newer Honda Foreman in the shop today with a shifting problem.  It was hard to change gears, and impossible to get into neutral.  The transmission on this machine, like almost every ATV, is part of the engine.  In order to do any transmission work you need to remove the engine from the frame.  That takes 2 to 3 hours on this machine.

Once I had the engine on the workbench I pulled the side cover off and removed the clutches to expose the shift mechanism. 

 Part of the escapement mechanism that that turns the shift drum was broken.  This machine was sunk under water last winter.  I suspect that this piece broke when someone tried to shift the machine with the crankcase full of ice.  This second photo show the broken part and another used part that I had left over from a Honda 420 rebuild project.  It appears that Honda uses the same shift linkage on the 500 and 420.

This last photo shows the shift mechanism put back together. There are a lot of springs, spacers, and little parts to keep track of.  Now I need a few more hours to put the engine back in the frame and try it out.

C.O.

Polaris Sportsman 500

I recently had my own machine in the shop.  It is a 2008 Polaris Sportsman 500 with about 4000 miles on it.  It was not keeping the battery charged and the tachometer was not working.  The first thing to check in this type of situation is the output from the stator. 

The stator is a series of electrical windings around an iron core.  The flywheel on the engine has permanent magnets in it that surround the stator and  produces an electric current when the flywheel spins.  The power produced is an AC voltage that varies with RPM.  This AC current is converted into DC and regulated to a nominal 12 volts by the voltage regulator.  This is the same basic system that is in almost every small engine.

When I checked the output from my stator with the engine running I got an erratic reading that was very low (7-8 volts) at low RPM.  I then disconnected the plug coming from the stator and tested the resistance on each lead.  I found that one of the leads was shorted to ground. 

I pulled the side cover/recoil housing off the engine and pulled the flywheel to reveal the stator.  This photo shows what I found.  Several of the windings had burned insulation on them and one winding had a few broken wires.  Normally this would mean automatic replacement of this part.  I check around and found that a Polaris replacement part is around $500 and an aftermarket stator is about $250. 

Since this is my own machine and I am trying to be frugal I decided to fix the bad stator.  I cut and unwound the broken wire from the worst spot on the stator.  I then splice the remaining ends together and reassembled it.  When I fired the engine up it started charging fine.  The burned insulation on the other windings has me a little worried about the lifespan of this part, but I think it should be ok for a while.  I may look around for a good used one to replace it with.

C.O.

Summer Vacation

I have been on summer vacation for a few months and have not had anything in the shop. We spent most of the summer in Minnesota and a few weeks in Guatemala.

While we were in Guatemala I had an opportunity to fix something.  We were walking to church on a Sunday morning and we noticed a very upset man trying to get the chain back on to the sprocket on his motorcycle.  Luckily I have a small crescent wrench that I carry around in my pocket (doesn't everyone).  With the wrench I was able to loosen the axle and get the chain back in place.  The motorcycle rider was very happy, I didn't understand what he said to me in Spanish, but he had a smile on his face.

I am now back in Alaska and getting back to my "regular" work. 

Remmington 11-87

I do a lot of mechanic work, but occasionally I get something different in the shop.  I recently had the opportunity to do a little gun smith work.

A customer brought in an old  Remmington 11-87.  This is a standard gas operated semi auto shotgun.  This one is a little bit more interesting because it is an uncommon left hand model.

The magazine tube is brazed or silver soldered in to the frame.  Some how this connection had come loose.  On this gun the magazine tube holds the whole fore arm together and without it the gun is useless.  The owner had tried to solder it back together with regular lead plumbing type solder but it did not hold.

I took the gun entirely apart and cleaned the mating surfaces up with a small stone in my Dremel tool.  Once it was cleaned and fluxed I fired up my torch and used some silver solder that I normally use for high pressure connections on refrigeration equipment.  It is hard to see in the video, but the metal has to be heated up until it just starts to glow.

The metal was a little discolored from the heat, but you can hardly notice with all the rust on this gun.  The owner was very happy to have it fixed in time for the spring time migration.