The weeks news. A couple new machines, and an old one breaks down.
It’s been a quiet week up here on the mountain, my little slice of heaven in the great northwest.
Much has gone on here since last I wrote. First, we got a new “brain” for my old Arctic Cat, and it’s running fine once again. I hope to hang on to it for a few more years before retiring it to our ever-growing parts pile. Having gotten that one running, our smaller machine, a 1987 Arctic Cat JAG, decided to breakdown, a tie rod snapped as I started off from the spring. Luckily, I wasn’t going that fast, and the lovely wife wasn’t riding it. Things could have gotten messy. As with most things that break down far from home, we currently have no way to get it home, so it will stay off the trail, out of the way, until we can figure out how to tow back or are able to tow it home in the spring. Then, I will decide what I want to do with it. It’s a nice little machine for its age, light enough for the lovely wife to pick up the rear end and move it around when the trail doesn’t allow for turning, and it’s easy for her to start. So, chances are, I will make the repairs and keep it.
Some of you might know that at one time I had a UTV with tracks that we used up here instead of snowmobiles. It was really too small for regular use up here and became a bigger headache than it was worth, so we got rid of it. I have since found out that the newer ones are built with tracks in mind, and have better axles and axle bearings to handle the strain of tracks. We have been talking about getting another, newer, UTV to use up here. While looking at a snowmobile at a local shop in town, in hopes of replacing the broken-down JAG, we managed to find one that’s only four years old, has four seats, a winch on the front, and has a more powerful motor. It also has a roof, windshield, and back window; all we need is sides. The price was also a plus. We decided that it was a deal we couldn’t pass up and made the purchase. We want tracks, but they are currently back ordered until sometime in March, which is fine as we have been able to use four-wheelers from the spring to the bottom anyway. So now, we’ll use the UTV instead, regulating our four-wheeler to emergency use only.
Since we have a hard-packed trail, we have been bringing the four-wheelers all the way home. Because of that, my son and I tried bringing the UTV up to at least the turn off to our road, since our road is only packed the width of one snowmobile, and a four-wheeler barely gets through. We made it to just below the turn off before the wheels started digging in. We backed it off the road, a mistake, and walked down for our snowmobiles. The next morning, I went down, hoping to drive it out and take it down to the spring, thinking that the snow would have firmed up enough overnight to get it turned around without much issue. However, it took a couple of hours, my son, a shovel, and the wench (moved three times by my son in waist deep snow) before we had the machine pointed downhill again. It won’t be coming back up until we have tracks on it.
My son’s snowmobile is older that my JAG, and has really been showing its age. This past week, I found him one built in this century, and picked it up. It’s having a bit of an overheating issue, but I think it’s an easy fix. I expect issues with older machines up here, as that’s life off grid; also, I buy them cheap, run them for a few years, then get rid of them, or part them out.
Well, that’s all the news for the week. Bye for now.
