I bought this four-wheeler in 1995. That makes it about 19
years old. After I had paid for it
and loaded it into my truck, I walked into the dealer's shop area and asked for
the manager. When he came over I told him I had just bought the four-wheeler,
it was paid for and now I wanted an honest answer. What can go wrong with this
machine, what breaks, what spare parts do you think I should carry?
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| The map shows waypoints recorded and transmitted from my SPOT locater. Waypoint 1 at the right is the cabin and Waypoint 8 at left is the trail head. That's the Talkeetna River winding across the top. Talkeetna is to the west (left) past the edge of the map. |
He looked at me and said, "Nothing, they always come
back. Get a tire repair kit and you’re good." So far he's been right, I haven't even needed the tire-repair kit, but that run almost ended yesterday at least in my own mind.
Let me explain a little of the mechanics involved first. You
can't start this four-wheeler if it is in gear. I imagine that's a safety
feature on most of them. There are three indicator lights: one
red if the engine oil is overheated, another red one tells you you are in
reverse gear and one lights green if the machine is in neutral. That green light has to be on or the engine won't start. There is no other indicator to let you know what gear you are using. To shift gears there is
a kick shifter, one down for reverse after you hold in a mechanical button and
four up for forward gears. Occasionally if I leave it in reverse when I turn it
off, it will be difficult to shift out of that gear to start it.
With that said, over the July 4 weekend at the East Pole, I pulled a heavy load of firewood up the
hill to the cabin, some of what I left at the bottom in March. Next to the cabin I had to stop on a steep bit of trail, I was backing
up, but had to stop and I locked in the parking brake and shut the machine off.
Then I unloaded the firewood, unhitched the trailer and moved it out of the way
and went to start the four-wheeler to set up for the next run down the hill.
No green light. I kept kicking the shifter upward and still
no green light, I figured it might somehow be jammed tight against something
and I tried to relieve that pressure by pushing it forward a little. Wouldn't
budge; I’d try to kick the shifter up out of reverse but still no green light.
The red reverse light wasn't on either but I couldn't remember if that came on
when the engine wasn't running.
To keep this post at a reasonable length I'll tell you I wrestled
with that machine for more than an hour, even involving the come-along using it
to pull the machine into different positions on the hill to try to relieve that
tension so I could start it. When I finally gave up it was 50 feet down the
hill from the cabin and still silent. By that time I had been thinking of
possibilities. In addition to a number of mechanical experiments I could have
tried, I also started thinking about leaving it there and walking out to the
trailhead, about seven miles of hilly, muddy trail and me not exactly in the
best shape of my life. I wasn't going to do it in 2 hours and 20 minutes. I
also realized I hadn't eaten in a while and maybe wasn't thinking clearly.
So, I left it and hiked up the cabin and made myself a hamburger. Of course, what follows a
filling lunch? A nap, of course. This is the Bush after all. I laid down for a
while, hoping to sleep and maybe wake up with a solution. But there wasn't going
to be any sleep; my mind just kept churning. On one side I was figuring out
the logistics of hiking out, what I was going to have to leave there, how I
could get the four-wheeler under the porch to protect it. The other half was
thinking through the difficulty with the four-wheeler looking for an answer.
After maybe 20 minutes of no sleep and a lot of thought, I
started thinking through reasons why that machine would not shift out of
reverse. As I thought about it, all the shifting I had tried was up, up toward
the forward gears. At times it felt like it had shifted but the green light did
not come on and the machine wouldn't start. As I thought further, I realized when I had moved it downhill it had gone fairly easily, but kind of chugged with that
sound an engine makes when the spark plugs aren't firing. Why would it go
forward if it was in reverse? It occurred to me I had been so convinced the transmission was stuck in reverse, the idea it might be in another gear never even came to mind.
It slowly dawned on me that I might have been shifting it
into forward gears and that's why it refused to start. My last thought before
attempting to fall asleep was I should try downshifting one gear at a time and
see if at one point the green light shined on.
Of course. with the simplest of all solutions burning in my
brain I wasn't about to fall asleep any time soon. Eventually, giving up, I put on my clothes and boots and headed downhill. I kept thinking it can't be this
simple. Still halfway planning my walk out, I sat in the seat and carefully kicked the shifter down one.
It felt like it had shifted gears, but no green light. I kicked it a second
time and again it felt like it shifted but no green. I kicked it again, turned
the key and, voila! A green light.
I hit the starter button and the engine fired right up. The darned thing had been in third
gear, not reverse. I raised my arms and gave a victory shout to the fans watching from the
woods. That was when the wave of stupid washed over me.
In a previous post, I mentioned one of the benefits of
living alone in the Bush is when you make stupid mistakes no one has to know
about it unless you want them to. This was one of those, but all in all it's
pretty funny too, so, I can take the ribbing. I'm just glad I didn't have to
test myself on that trail. Of course, there is some satisfaction in keeping the 19-year performance record intact, despite the spates of pilot error.
Incidentally while I was out there, we had enjoyed three
beautiful hot days. By hot, I mean you couldn't even hold onto the door knob for any
length of time. The next day, I
drove out, loaded everything on the trailer and headed for home. A couple of
miles on the highway and I stopped for a snack. When I emerged from the store,
I felt the first drops of rain. I drove the rest of the way home in a downpour.
If I had hiked, I figured I would have been about halfway along the trail to the trailhead when
the rain started. I'll take it.
Plus now there is at least a winter's worth of firewood under the cabin. Only
four more years to go.
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