83' Trailfire LX Resto

[idMXLT]

I like the progress that you are making. OK, where is NH/PNW??? I am guessing New Hampshire, I feel I am wrong.

I used to live in New Hampshire, and still have some sleds/parts there. I currently live in Washington State (Pacific North West).

[idMXLT]

My seat foam finally dried out so it was time to recover and reinstall. Keep in mind that I am no kind of upholstery man and generally avoid cosmetic work like this at all costs. I also reused my old seat cover as it looked great. I realize that it will likely crack in the near future, but hey, this is good practice for later!

First I plopped my freshly made seat board (complete with stainless hardware) and dry foam into the old seat cover. Some tugging and judicious heating with a heat gun smoothed out the worst of the wrinkles.




Tools of the trade, stainless staples and my trusty Arrow.



I started on the front, heating, smoothing, and stapling. Some weight was required to get the sides pulled onto the seat board. Body to the rescue! (Terrible cell phone pic)


Pulling, heating, smoothing and stapling does most of the job. The rear flap needed to be glued as well. I used 3M weatherstripping adhesive.



Ta Da! The finished product. Not perfect, but not too bad.

[sledhead16]

not to shabby!

[idMXLT]

The Trailfire LX went to her first show! Not the best pic but here we are.





The Pacific Northwest Vintage Snowmobile Club was invited to share our sleds at the Western Air and Auto Museum in Hoor River Oregon this past weekend. We had a blast! This museum maintains a collection of runners (aircraft, cars, motorcycles) and operates each and every one of them. While we were there they flew a 1910 Curtis! If you have a chance check it out.

[sledhead16]

She looks good! Beautiful area!

[idMXLT]

The Trailfire LX finally hit the snow! This ride was early in the season (Dec 20th) and the snow ended up being terrible! No base, warm temps...plus it was raining...... just a crappy day of riding overall so I really couldn't do this sled justice. Hopefully next weekend we can take it out again for a proper rip .


Part of the problem was vapor lock. The intake snout got turned around while I rode and ended up pulling hot air off the surface of the muffler. This caused the mother of all vapor locks and it took quite some time of putting snow on the carb to cool things down and get her started again.




But, when it was running it seemed to run good. It handles well, and scoots along nicely. I think I may fiddle with the clutching/gearing though. Both this sled and my Liquifire are geared very high, and for our prevailing conditions they would benefit from lower gearing I think.

Stay tuned.

[sledhead16]

I wish we had some of your snow at least here in MN! We only get a couple inch spurts

[idMXLT]

Argh, this thing is giving me fits! I'm having some hot restart problems with it that are proving difficult to chase down.


The issue:
A dead cold start is no issue. Choke, 2 pulls, off she goes. Ride for a bit, warm everything up, then shutdown.

If you immediately try to restart (less than 5 minutes), it will fire up no problem

If you wait more than 5-10 minutes, it will kick a little and try to run but inevitably stall. Opening the throttle at all will stall it. Holding the throttle wide (like it's flooded) results in no fire at all. Plugs are dry. The only way I have found to start it in this condition is to full choke (over center on the lever). Pull once and it will fire and immediately flood/die. Choke off, hold the throttle WOT, and pull 5-6 times. It will sputter more with each pull and finally roar to life (like flooded engines tend to do).

If the above no start occurs and you wait 30 minutes to 1 hour, it will fire up after a few pulls.


The carb has been pulled twice: pilot, air, and main circuits are all clean. Compression is 120psi on both sides. Spark is not what I would call fantastic but is unchanging throughout the entire affair. It's blue but doesn't SNAP like a Rotax single with clean points. Pressure test revealed no air leaks.


I'm running low on ideas. I would swap the ignition parts with known good ones as a diagnostic, but this engine has the HSR CDI..... not easy to find parts for.

[Danzig]

Sure does sound like a CDI getting heat soaked or stator , my opinion

[idMXLT]

Heat related ignition failure has crossed my mind, but I've encountered that before and this doesn't behave like what I saw in the past. Spark is unchanging (visually) from cold to hot. Plus it starts hot just fine provided you don't sit too long.

Luckily I can reproduce this in my shop, but it's still frustrating. Guess I will track down some spare HSR components to test with and use as a backup if not needed.

(Zips on flame suit) Wish I had a Rotax in this thing!