A quick note to the sled owners with air cooled engines..

[dougspcs]

So backstory is..I was 15 and had bought a 1978 Yamaha SL338 from a buddy for $300 near the end of the winter..

I got 2 or 3 rides then the snow melted and the machine parked..I found a nice spot in the barn. Cleaned it up really nice and covered it to keep the pigeon shlt from making it dirty..

The following winter..1st snow fall and I'm riding home on the school bus feeling pretty horny to ride my sled. Run to the barn and uncover the machine, fill the tank and got it running in a couple pulls of the cord.

Grab my helmet, gloves and warm coat and off I go..flying down the snow covered road. About 3 miles from the house..BOOM and I suddenly lose all my power..managed to limp back home the machine barely running on one cylinder.

I open the hood and start pulling the shrouds off the engine..there before my eyes is the biggest damn mouse nest packed up in the shrouds completely blocking the passage thru the cylinder fins..

Once I got it apart I found a dime sized hole in my #1 piston..

Fast forward 30 years..I get this great little 98 Indy Lite.



The 1st snow fall I take my daughter out for a short ride..near the end of the ride is starts to sputter a bit but no worries we're done and I trailered tha machine..

On the way home I started to think about the possible reason for the sputtering.

I decided to investigate..as I opened the hood I see small bits of what looked like fiberglass insulation sprayed around the engine compartment. 5 minutes to remove the shrouds and guess what I found? A big azz mouse house in the fan housing!!

Thankfully no damage resulted.

Moral to the story guys..before you jump on your sled and take that 1st ride. Check it over..you could save yourself a world of pain.

[ebaccm26]

This is a pretty common problem, one way to prevent it is to put something such as socks or dryer sheets in all openings such as the exhaust and air filter when storing your sled for the off season.

[hillbilly 200x]

Oh ya you always have to go over them with a fine tooth comb before you get to ride them lol always have to make sure the carb's are clean and set as well or your like my dad and having to rebuild the top end. sorry for high jacking your thread doug

[kb0nly]

Been there done that, the next year when you put it away get a box of moth balls, rip the top off the box and tuck it under the hood with the motor, kept the little buggers out of my sled on the farm for years, they just hate the smell i guess. Problem i usually had was them crawling up into the muffler and building a home in there, a ball of steel wool in the end of the exhaust kept them out of that.

[atc007]

Even more than air cooled fans and pipes,,they LOVE air boxes. It only takes a little while to go through your sled,clean,grease,adjust and KNOW you'll be happy out on the trails : ))

[dougspcs]

Even more than air cooled fans and pipes,,they LOVE air boxes. It only takes a little while to go through your sled,clean,grease,adjust and KNOW you'll be happy out on the trails : ))

Funny you should meantion that..

I went the other day to look at a 2004 Polaris 500. Condition was a bit rough, but not bad..seller tried to tell me it was from his cabin up north and he just didn't need it anymore..

Told me how he pulled it from storage and tried to start it, then realized it had a big mouse nest in the airbox..he cleaned it out and got it running.

Boy did that thing run lumpy..oh yeah he says, it could use a carb cleaning.

When I started to back away he dropped his asking from $1600 to $1000..I knew then I had a machine with a serious issue and left it where it sat.

My money was on the truth that the mouse nest probably got sucked into the carb and was probably running thru the engine. No way I was buying a machine that needed the engine split to remove mouse house!

[Gearheadtom]

The same thing goes for any ride-on/lawnmower engine. Mice love to build a nest under the engine covers.