Something a little odd

 I've been spending a lot of my time working for the snowmobile club. I don't know if I've mentioned it much on here but a couple years ago I became president of the Coldbrook Snowmobile Club. It's one of those things I'd never really intended to do but I guess that describes my life...

Anyway, this time of year the club is busy grooming the snowmobile trails. This involves smoothing the snow out to make the ride less of a kidney buster. Left to their own devices the trails turn into a series of bumps that beat you and your machine to death.

So a couple weeks ago I was taking a machine south and came to a gate. This is not uncommon, the Army Corps of Engineers owns the land and put up gates to keep cars out. The problem here is that I couldn't open the lock on the gate. In the end I had to back the machine 500 yards to a place I could turn around. 

The machine in question is the club's 1989 Tucker Sno-Cat

Shown here passing another gate this thing is a pig to back up. After 5-ish years of running the machine I've finally gotten adequate at backing it up but its still a big challenge.

Buddy Ben called the Army Corps and asked them to fix the lock. They tried it and discovered they couldn't open it either so a couple days after that we cut the lock. I don't have a good picture of the  cutting or the aftermath but it was a challenge to cut because of its placement on the gate.

Of course the Army Corps wasn't too happy that we had cut their lock and "Destroyed Federal property" and they wanted us to go to a locksmith to get it replaced.

Well I know a little about locks so I retrieved the remains (in the top center of the pic above) and after soaking the lock itself in a variety of magic substances we managed to get it freed up and the lock core removed.

The lock core, is unusual, you can see it's listed as an MX13 which is a proprietary, access controlled core. Meaning they only sell them to locksmiths.

The lock is a common Masterlock Pro 6621. They run about $50 apiece with no core. I managed to score 4 of them on eBay for $50.

Once I had the lock in hand it was simplicity to transfer the lock core into the new lock. If you need to do this you have to open the lock and there is a little allen screw down in the hole that the moving side of the shackle goes into, then the core drops right out. Do be careful as theres a little shim thing on the end of the core, don't lose that. Fortunately it only goes together one way so as long as you have all the bits its no big deal to put back together.

Interestingly Army Corps wanted the old lock back but mostly because it was numbered on the plastic cover part.

I had to pass through that gate again a couple days ago and I'm pleased to report that the lock opened just fine. The problem the old lock had, I think, is caused by somebody using oil in it. Do not oil locks, the oil attracts goo that will seize the lock causing it to get stuck. The variety of solvents I ran into the old cylinder all ran out brown with chunks from the oil in the lock.

I use Houdini Lock lube which I think I got from Amazon, on all my locks. Its some kind of dry lubricant in what I think is an alcohol carrier. It smells like citrus which is nice and doesn't attract dirt.

Spring on the horizon

 Here it is the first of March, the days are getting longer and the temperature is rising in north central MA. With days above freezing the snow is rapidly melting and, as there is no real freeze in sight the season of grooming snowmobile trails is rapidly coming to a close.

This Tucker Sno-Cat has spent the season grooming the Ware river rail trail. We call this one the "Southern Tucker" because, until recently, it groomed Rutland State park at the southern end of our trail system. This year it was technically the Northern Tucker and the Northern Tucker moved to the south. I don't know why, I don't dare ask. You might remember my writing about the Northern Tucker a few years ago.

Anyway Chris has been running the machine but last Saturday he was going to be away and since we figured the trails would close soon Ben and I took it south so it will be easier to haul to it's summer home.

Like the Northern Tucker this machine has a Cummins 6BT, back in 2019 I wrote that the other machine had 135hp and I don't guess that this one would be any different. I did find that this one has Dana 70 axles (70 is stamped right into the case), interestingly the rear one is upside down but I guess that makes sense since the engine and transmission are mounted backwards. Remember the machine has two rear axles since it steers by pivoting the axles, the machine doesn't articulate, the axles do.

Like the Northern the Southern Tucker has suffered the neglect of "Its not really my machine" from its operators. The first thing I noticed when I got in the cab is how badly it smells. When I took over the ASV the very first thing I did was to clean out every mouse nest I could find and then scrub every surface with Simple Green cleaner. For the summer I put small squares of denim, soaked with peppermint oil inside the cab, it seems to work, the machine smells much better. I mentioned to Ben that I've put them in his machine too, it also smells better. "Keep it up!" he told me. He's lucky to park next to me, I happened to have an extra square and he benefits...

Running a Tucker is interesting when you're used to a fully hydrostatic 2 track machine. Tucker uses a conventional automatic transmission so you feel it shift. The machine also creeps when it's in gear which the ASV and Pisten Bully don't do. 

The rear two wheels on the rear driver's track show an all too common problem. They're urethane coated and the coating is falling off. This is at the end of our trip, there was more rubber on there at the beginning. We spend an inordinate amount of money on tracks and wheels on the two Tuckers the club owns. In fact this is the first year I've been hanging around with these guys that we haven't had to at least repair a track...

Another new toy: or "What spends the summer in your yard?"

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit I haven't told you about this, I've been harboring a secret:

Its a hard secret to hide, its 7 feet wide and weighs 9,000 pounds.

A few years ago I rejoined the Coldbrook Snowmobile Club which is a requirement of registering a snowmobile here in MA. I saw on their Facebook group that they needed people to help with grooming. These kind of clubs are all the same, the same people do all the work so I figured I'd help out. The first night I got to ride in the machine pictured, we call it "The ASV" since thats the manufacturer and we only have one. The idea is to pull a kind of cheese grater arrangement (the drag) over the trail to smooth it out, cut down the bumps, fill in the low spots and pack it all hard. This makes riding a lot more pleasant.

After that one night in the ASV I switched to riding in the bigger machine, a Pisten Bully PB200

and so things went for a couple years. Once or twice a week Ben and I would go out and groom the trails. I mostly sat in the right (passenger's) seat and opened gates or moved branches or whatever out of the trail. I got a little seat time too but mostly I just helped out.

Then last January on a bitterly cold (like 6F) day I got a call "Do you think you can get that ASV to start?" Remember the part where I had only been in the ASV once? I didn't even know HOW to start it, but what the heck, I've been driving diesel cars for years how different could it be?

Problem #1, the batteries have been replaced but not installed. I didn't take them apart and I've never seen them installed.

After a lot of head scratching I got everything installed and the engine cranking over but it didn't seem to excited with the idea of running. So I took my heat gun and stuck it in the air intake and heated it up until the canister was warm to the touch. When I hit the key it fired up like it was July. My grin was so big I thought the top of my head would fall off.

So thats the story of how I became the ASV operator. Theres more to it of course, those first couple trips were pretty scary, the time I'd spent running the Pisten Bully hard gotten me trained well enough to be terrible, now I'm learning a smaller machine thats actually more difficult to run. The problem is the lack of size and power. When running the Pisten Bully if you go into a turn overloaded you might run out of traction and sink in the snow, in the ASV you run out of power and can't make the turn. The problem is that the ASV is then more annoying to recover, so I spend a bunch of time backing up which leaves a big pile of snow from the drag that I have to deal with.

Still its a hoot, I drive around the snowmobile trails at 6mph turning a rutted out goat trail into a smooth 7foot wide highway through the woods. People riding by give us the thumbs up and thank us for our hard work.

Which finally brings us to the picture at the top of this post where the ASV is living in my front yard for the summer. At the end of last season we went out for our (Mike goes with me, we don't like to have an operator out alone) last run and I'd just gotten the machine warmed up and the drag full and grooming good when all of a sudden we're enveloped in steam. Turns out a heater hose has broken under the cab. We limp to the beach where we'll be holding a bbq later that day.

Turns out the same thing had happened the year before and they had spliced the break so I used that splice to hook the two heater hoses together which let me limp it back to the barn. A couple months ago I finally got a chance to fix it. I bought 18' of 3/4" heater hose and had 6" left over afterward. The heater core sits right at the very front o the machine, the engine is in the rear so the hoses are very long.

These are the failed hoses, you can see I had to cut them in half to get them out, the cab of the machine tilts to allow access to the underside but it was still pretty tight access. All things considered its not that bad of a job, I spent maybe 3 hours for the whole deal including adding a couple gallons of coolant. I had to add almost another whole gallon once I got the engine to warm up fully and I expect I'll have to add more the first time we go out, its a challenge to get the heater core to fill, its high above the engine and way in front...

Anyway heres hoping we get some snow this winter so the might ASV and I can cruise the trails again "making the white ribbon".