Changing times...

While we haven't really gotten enough snow to switch over to the sled, the transmission on the 4-wheeler has started getting troublesome to shift and a quick check on the manual shows that to fix most anything there, you pretty much have to pull the engine and split the crank cases. Since that's not likely to happen anytime soon, decided to get the Ski Doo running and break out the sled trail. Now the machine hadn't been touched since last spring, but it usually only takes a little priming to get gas to the carb and it fires right up. Well not this time. So after several hours of futile work, priming, pulling and cleaning the spark plugs, and finally using starting fluid with no result, towed it down to the garage and let it it sit inside overnight. The next day proved to be more of the same, except now I was pretty sure that the emergency stop switch had been hit, shutting off the ignition, so it was way over primed and flooded. So let it sit overnight again, this time with the plugs out figuring with plugs clean and dry, it'd start the next day. Well it didn't, so after a few more fruitless hours, swallowed my pride and called a neighbor who also has an older Skandic. "Did you try new plugs?" he asked.  "No, the old ones are fine" I said. "No, I'll bet they're not, that's your problem." After further discussion, he said he thought he had a spare pair, so I went over and borrowed them. And sure enough, it fired right up with the new plugs. Go figure, the old ones fired just fine when they were out of the engine, but apparently not enough spark to fire up the still damp cylinders.

The recalcitrant Ski Doo, sitting pretty down by the wood piles. If it could talk, it'd probably smirk and say "that'll teach you for not giving me a new set of plugs."