ATV Modification: Adding a Recoil Starter to the Arctic Cat DVX 250

The Arctic Cat 250 utility model comes with a recoil starter, in case the battery dies and the electric start doesn’t work.
The Arctic Cat DVX 250 model does not.

It’s the same engine, and the recoil starter isn’t terribly heavy. It might add two pounds. So why didn’t they include it? Having a cheap, lightweight backup system is always a good idea.
Maybe they didn’t add one because the DVX is more likely to be spending its time at high RPM in the sand than hopping logs in the forest.

Anyway, I ended up with a DVX 250 that I intend to use deep in the forest. We never ride alone, but a dead battery would still be a big pain in the butt.

So, I went down to my local Arctic Cat dealer and spent some time looking at the manual and the fiche with the parts guy. Here’s what I came up with:

Purchase these parts:

3303-643 - Recoil Starter Assembly - About $65
3303-828 - Plate Ratchet - About $28
3303-643 - Gasket, Crankcase Cover, Left - About $35
3303-101 - Gasket, Starter Cover - About $6
Total Parts Cost: About $135 (plus sales tax)

Here are the parts lists in case you need to look at them:
Arctic Cat 250 Utility
Arctic Cat 250 DVX

Installation is fairly straightforward, and should take you about an hour (90 minutes if you’re the cautious type). There’s just one tricky spot. I’ll go over the whole process here:

1. Remove the black plastic outer crankcase cover on the rear of the crankcase.
2. Remove the intake hose from the front of the crankcase cover.
3. Remove the exhaust hose from the rear of the crankcase cover.
4. Remove the small aluminum cover that goes where the recoil starter would be and clean the old gasket from it.
5. Remove the crankcase cover and clean the old gasket from it.

6. Here’s the tricky bit: Make yourself a holder to keep the pulley compressed using one of the crankcase cover bolts and a few large diameter fender washers. Screw this into the top-left-most hole in the crankcase cover, with the fender washers overlapping the drive pulley. Tighten this down so that the drive pulley cannot spring out when you remove the flange nut from the crankshaft.

7. Using an appropriate holder to keep the drive pulley from rotating, remove the 14mm flange nut that holds the drive pulley onto the crankshaft.
8. Remove the small spacer between the flange nut and the pulley. This spacer does not show up in the parts fiche, so don’t lose it! If you ever go back to not having a recoil starter, good luck buying one! You’d have to use washers instead. I suggest using a zip tie to attach it to the old recoil starter cover, and then store them both in a safe place.
9. Put the plate ratchet in place, making sure that the splines on the plate ratchet engage the grooves on the crankshaft. This is why you need to hold the drive pulley compressed, so that the grooves are visible.

10. Put the 14mm flange nut back on (without the spacer you removed in step 8 ) and, after making sure that the splines of the plate ratchet are still in the grooves on the crankshaft, tighten the flange nut to 72 ft-lbs of torque.
11. Put the crankcase cover back on, with the new gasket, and put a couple of bolts in hand-tight for now.
12. Put the recoil starter in place, with the new gasket, and put all of its bolts in hand-tight.
13. Make sure the recoil starter works. Assuming it does, proceed. If not, take it back apart and figure out what you missed.
14. Put the rest of the crankcase cover bolts back in and tighten all of them to 8 ft-lbs.
15. Tighten the recoil starter bolts to 8 ft-lbs.
16. Re-attach the intake and exhaust hoses to the crankcase cover.
17. Put the black plastic outer crankcase cover back on.

That’s it! You’re ready to ride, and you have a backup recoil starter!

ATV Trip to Conconully (2009)

We went to Conconully for an ATV ride and camping trip. It was a heck of a lot of fun! Angela didn’t ride, but found some things to do on her own (strolling through a cemetary at dusk, for example).

Oh, no! That guy’s got a camera! Lock him up!

Maybe you’ve heard this already, but this dude (Shane Becker) was shopping at REI, took a picture with his phone of two guys refilling an ATM. They didn’t take kindly to it, and the situation escalated. Dude was taken downtown in cuffs, but no charges filed. At no point did either the Loomis guys or the cops ask him to delete the picture from his phone, which seems to imply that this was more about power than about threats to security or property.

Amusingly, this week’s copy of The Stranger features the picture on the front cover, and the story on page 12.

Here’s my little contribution, taken at the Safeway at Frontier Village today. I drove 10 miles to use this ATM because it can accept checks without an envelope or deposit slip, which I dig. Thinking that 4pm on a Saturday was probably a good time to catch this machine without too much of a line, I drove out there. Lo and behold, this geek had it wide open, and when I asked, he told me he’d have it out of order for at least another half hour. So I figured it was worthy of a snapshot.

Of course, learning from the Shane Becker situation, I didn’t stick around to find out if anyone noticed me taking the picture surreptiously and being frightened little rabbits or opportunistic bullies about it.

If visibility of an open ATM is a security risk, then these guys need to start setting up privacy screens with them when they service the machines.

I encourage everyone, if you see an ATM being serviced in plain view of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and anyone else who cares to look, PLEASE take a photo and post it publicly! Long live civil disobedience!

Follow-up: Maybe you saw the news article a while back about the UW professor who was arrested and detained, handcuffed in a police car, for 25 minutes because she took some photos of some power lines, and some wuss at the Bonneville power administration freaked out and called 911? Well, that has come to its conclusion, and I am happy to say that the city has to pay out some cash for its mistake. Even if that money includes some of my taxes, I feel that it is a good investment, to teach our government that this kind of crap is NOT OK. Here’s the link to the followup article.

 Here’s a comment from a friend of mine regarding the situation:

I wish it had been more than $8,000.  Apparently there wasn’t even an
apology or an admission of fault, or if there was it didn’t make it into
the paper or come with a clause that the chief couldn’t crow that they
“made the right decision at the time” and drown things out.

My Hyundai Santa Fe is all paid off!

Finally, my Santa Fe is all paid off. We now own all of our cars! Woohoo!

The Santa Fe has about 115,000 miles on it. The loan was larger than it should have been because I traded in an Accent to get it. I should have let the dealer fix the clutch problem in the Accent under warranty, and then sold it used - but that’s the way it goes sometimes.

Anyway, I hope to get at least 200,000 miles out of the Santa Fe, and it’s doing very well, so I think it will last. Now that I don’t use it for towing ATVs around anymore, and the driveline and one axle was replaced under warranty, I think I have a pretty good shot at realizing that goal.

Oregon Dunes ATV/Camping Trip

On May 1st, we headed down to Coos Bay, Oregon, to check out the famous Oregon Dunes Recreation Area. We’d heard such marvelous things about it, but we were somewhat skeptical. Still, even if we only went once, we had to know. So Eugene, Graig, Dad and I loaded up our gear and hit the road.

First, I have to say that it was the most physically punishing and financially draining trip I have yet made in the RV. Part of the issue is that I was pulling a trailer that is very heavy even before you load anything on it. By the time you load four 750-lb ATVs on it, some extra tools, spare tires, and a ramp, it’s extremely heavy. I have no doubt I was exceeding both the recommended tongue weight, and the recommended overall towing weight of the RV. The front end of the RV was lifted somewhat, which made the rig more sensitive to bumps in the road, side winds, and any ants that happened to be crossing the freeway. It also affected the angle of the headlights, which was not so good when it got dark and very rainy. It was challenging to keep the thing going in more or less a straight line, and keeping it on the road in the twisty hilly areas once we left I-5.

Another issue was stopping distance. We had to keep a very respectable stopping distance in front of us, which was difficult because even when we exceeded the speed limit, other cars kept pulling in front of us and then stomping on the brakes when traffic slowed suddenly. The horn got a lot of usage on this trip. If Dad hadn’t shared in the driving, there might have been a serious accident, or it might have taken us half again as long due to rest stops.

I learned all about weight ratings on tires on this trip. It turns out that the tires which came on the trailer did not have a very high load rating, and we lost another one. We ended up replacing several tires, to prevent any more blowouts from the remaining questionable ones. Fortunately, on the trip home, the ground was wet the entire way due to rain, which helped with the tire heat/wear.

Once safely home, I resolved to buy a new trailer that weighs much less, and can only hold three ATVs instead of four. If we make a trip with four ATVs in the future, we will have to bring a second vehicle. Gas is cheaper than tires, when you blow tires on the freeway.

OK, enough about the driving.

We visited two sand dune areas. One was accessible directly from the KOA RV Park we stayed at. The dunes were about three times as big as the ones we have seen in Eastern Washington, and pretty fun. Unfortunately for Eugene, he left after this portion of the ride and did not go with us to the other riding area, which had much larger dunes.

On the second riding day, we loaded the ATVs onto the trailer and went to the “Winchester Bay” area. Those dunes were simply amazing! The place called “Banshee Hill” turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. We suspect its fame is due to its proximity to the parking area, not due to any other virtue it has. It was fun, but not as fun as the reviews made out. Further in, we came across dunes so tall and smooth that we were afraid our ATVs would roll down the hill end over end instead of rolling down on their wheels. The ones that had a nice long, smooth face, we could see all of the way down, and that had plenty of stopping space were the most fun. We gunned the engines and sped down the face of those ones. Well, I did anyway. The others were a bit more cautious.

We had a really good time on that second run, and it made the trip worthwhile. However, they are still just sand dunes - and eventually the fun wears out. Also, we have big, heavy utility ATVs with traction tires, not light, sporty utility ATVs with sand tires - so our experience will never be as good as it could be, unless we buy another set of ATVs.

All of that being said, I doubt we will make another Oregon Dunes trip. If we do, it will likely be in conjunction with some other riding in the area, so it’s not all just about the dunes.

Next up: Another trip to Conconully! Check out the previous one!

ATV Riding!

Dad’s wrist seems to have healed up well enough to ride ATVs again. I invited Glenn along as well, and a good time was had by all! There were  no serious injuries either to person or ATV, although both took a bit of a bump toward the end of the ride.

Glenn and Dad on ATVs

Glenn takes it deep!

Appliances Looking for New Homes

Michele is giving away some stuff she doesn’t need anymore. She takes good care of her stuff, so these items will be in great condition, and she keeps the manuals for everything too (weirdo).

If you’re interested in any of these things, leave a comment on the blog or call/e-mail Michele to arrange a time for pickup. First come, first served!

A bit of laptop frustration

Keyboard manufacturers mostly (with some exceptions) use the QWERTY layout, and when you’re typing things, you can usually find most keys to be where you expect them to be. However, they seem to violently disagree on where to put the “\” key, and how big to make the spacebar. This can be mildly irritating.

Laptops are even worse than “standard” keyboards in the variation from one to the other.

MOST of them are fairly consistent about where they put the CTRL key, the Fn key, and the ESC key. the “Windows Key” which brings up the Start Menu is one of those “wandering” keys. So I usually don’t bother looking for the “Windows Key”, I just use CTRL-ESC to bring up the Start Menu.

Well, there’s a particularly annoying issue:

My Lenovo (Thinkpad) laptop reverses the CTRL and the Fn keys. So when using the Thinkpad, I often press Fn when I mean to press CTRL, and stuff doesn’t work as expected. This annoyed me for a long time, but I am getting over it.

It’s even worse than that:

My Dell 5150 laptop, which has the CTRL and Fn keys in their proper positions, happens to have the “Suspend” Function (activated by the Fn key) overlaid on the ESC key.

I think you can work out what happened next.

Tags: Annoyances, Keyboard Layouts

Party time

Louise is about to celebrate another glorious year of life! As you probably know, her birthday is on February 11th. That’s a Wednesday this year, so it would not work well for us to get together then. Still - it’s party time! Tommy and I will assemble some appetizers and bake a cake. What kind of cake do you like best, Louise? Come and spend a little time with us next Sunday, February15th, at 1:00. We’ll hoist a glass of sparkling cider and toast our birthday girl. Please let us know if you can join us.

I love you all very much. Can’t wait to see you.

Business is slowing down nicely.

At least, I hope so. I’m very pleased that Paul is doing so well in his business, and it sounds like life in general is going well for you, Paul. That’s great! For myself, I really want to slow down a little and that has been difficult and a bit scary.

My manager has approved my transition from full-time to part-time work at Adobe. I proposed working 30 hours a week from home (6 a.m. to noon), doing email only - no more manning the Reseller Hotline. That was supposed to start March 1. However, they haven’t hired the two people they plan to get to replace me on the phones yet, and once they do, I’ll still have to train them, so maybe April 1 is more realistic.

They are having a “retirement” party for me next Wednesday night. That seems so strange. I am not retiring - I’m just going to work fewer hours. I’ll still be considered a full-time employee. But I will no longer be in the office every day, so I guess they want to say goodbye.

In preparation for this, we bought some new computer tables at Ikea, though we haven’t set them up yet. Would anyone like a computer hutch? We will have two to donate to someone soon. I’m also getting a hardware VPN solution, though I’m not sure what I need to get to make that work yet. There’s a whole Adobe mobile employee web site I haven’t explored yet. Do you get the idea I’m dragging my feet?

I’m a little nervous about making a LOT less money in the near future. I did a budget and it did not look good. Eating out will be a thing of the past. Not sure how we’re going to finance our road trip this summer.

On the other hand, it will be good to eat at home all the time. Home-cooked meals tend to be much less expensive, less salty, and less fattening than restaurant meals. Tom and I are good cooks, so I don’t think we will suffer that much. We might even see some weight loss and reduction in our blood pressure, cholesterol, and sugar levels.

We’ll have more time to exercise too. We bought a Wii system and Wii Fit, which we haven’t used much yet. I plan to start a routine of walking at noon every day when I stop work, then doing the Wii Fit thing after that.

And I can work during our road trip to Reno and Los Angeles this summer. Since I’ll just be doing email, I can work from anywhere, so won’t have to use up my vacation time any day that I can spend 6 hours working.

I’ve also applied for Social Security benefits to supplement my income, though it has been a month and they have not approved my application yet. I will go visit them in person soon. They can’t refuse me, but they can limit how much they give me, and they clearly have the power to drag their feet on the whole process.

That’s as far as I have gotten on planning for “retirement.” I think it’s unlikely I’ll ever be in a position financially to completely retire. I just hope I will always have paid employment and benefits. Life could get very dicey without them.