A new day, a new engine

December 3, 2007Dan No Comments »

KZ440 engine for my '74 Cat

Hello! I’m sorry for the lengthy intermission this site has been on recently…er…the last month. Things have been busy. We had a week of Thanksgiving vacation in there somewhere, and I am very thankful for it. I was going to write an entry here while I was on vacation entitled ‘6 pies and a cheesecake’, which basically describes dessert after Thanksgiving dinner at my Grandma’s. It was pretty amazing. I had two pieces of the best tasting blueberry pie I’ve ever had, and 1 piece each of a dutch apple pie and a traditional apple pie. It’s ok though, they were small pieces 😉 The week of vacation went by fast, and obviously I never got my post out here.

Anyway, my return from break saw green grass most of the way through the UP, including up here in Houghton. That didn’t last for long though — the Tuesday after we got back, snow clouds filled the sky and then opened up to cover the Copper Country in beautiful white powder. Since then, it seems like we’ve been under a winter storm warning more often than not. If I had to guess, I’d say there’s probably 2 feet on the ground at least. It’s been really nice. All the snow ‘inspired’ me to put my snowmobile back together. A heavy work load in classes this past week kept me from tinkering with it all week, but Saturday I got up early and installed the steering, put in the rear suspension and dropped the engine back in. With some help from Chris, we had it up and running (great) by 6 pm. We went out for a ride last night and it was great. No mechanical problems for either of us.

To finally reference the title of this post and the picture that goes with it, since getting my snowmobile engine and suspension off of my workbench and out of my room, things have been a little empty in here. I decided I’d bring up the engine from my old ’74 Arctic Cat I had sitting downstate. The engine for that needs to be rebuilt, so I’ll see if I can get that done (or at least mostly done) by the time Christmas break rolls around. Hopefully replacing the crankshaft end seals will breath some life back into this old 440. Even more hopefully — we’ll have a sufficiently white Christmas down in GR for me to install this engine and take the old Lynx II for a spin. That’s enough for tonight, I have schoolwork to do and sleep to catch up on.

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