Home of K-fab

11 Seconds Fast?
(Mexico's a Mean Place)

The Dez uses an Arctic Cat 1000 triple sled engine for the go factor. I have a pair of them - one bone stock (180 - 185 hp), one ported w/head work (195ish hp).

After the stocker lost a cylinder at Buttecup this past Feb (engine was tired - lots of hours/miles and a few races under it's belt), I dropped the modified engine in it. This engine was fresh for the race. I had about 30 minutes on it - just some run in time out at Happy Valley. It also had a set of Motosuckaweenie V-Farce 3 reed cages in it.

The reeds had a max of 2 hours on them. I'd put them in the engine just before wadding the Dez in Snowflake - so I probably had an hour of pre-race testing on them, along with 18 miles of Snowflake and it was replaced by the stocker on the first weekend after getting the Dez back from the big crash.

Anyhow I had a race in Mexico this past weekend (April 30, 2005).
Friday after work the crew was ready to go racing. Jay, his step-bro Jimmy, James, his boy Chase and I all load up in the Big Blue Beast and head south.

We figured this would be a fun race. James was replacing Jay as Co-driver (Jay said that once we won a race, he was giving up his seat), the last Mexico race had gone really well, I knew what to expect from the course, the Dez had been gone through completely and had the fresh, modded engine in it. Thee last thing I expected was power plant related issues.

This time, we ran the course in reverse direction. The start was in some really deep sand. James and I rolled up to the line and waited for the starter to wave us off. The flag drops, I roll into the throttle to get the Dez rolling and as it starts to get up on top of the sand, I bury the pedal. We're rewarded with a nice shrill bbbbrrRRRAAAAWWWWW and very quickly it's followed by RAAAaawwwwwwffpt. James is saying "Step on it!" - I was! DOH! 11 seconds into the race and I'd lost a cylinder.

We pull off the course and head back to the pits. The Beast is gone already! Fortunately the radio's working and we catch Jay just as he's pulling out of The Oasis' parking lot.

We start trouble shooting.
Jetting is extremely rich on the magneto side jug - Changed the plug (thinking we'd fouled one) - no change.
Change jetting - nothing changes.
Did a comp check; 155 - right where it's supposed to be.
It's obvious that cylinder #3 is the issue - the plug's wet, there's no heat coming out of it's exhaust pipe, on the EGT cylinders 1 & 2 were reading 600 or so and cylinder #3 is reading 140. (lower throttle positions) The engine won't rev out either
We finally pull the intake boot and Jay says "Hey, I can see the rod!"

11 seconds of racing and we're done. The ONLY box of parts I didn't bring was the one that had the stock reed cages in it.

We put the Dez back in the van & headed homeward to Phoenix. James and I proceeded to drink a bunch of Dos XX beer and enjoy the ride home... (Jay was driving)

On Monday I took the Dez to ATV Racing and started the process of fixing it. I pulled the reeds out and, well, take a look at the pix below. The two left side pictures shows what the cages is supposed to look like. You can see how much is missing in the other pictures.

I'm going back to stock reeds. I need reliability. The stock power plant has enough performance to get the job done. The modded engine will give me better low end, so it should work better in the tight stuff, but over all, I don't really need anymore power than I already have, but I MUST have reliability so I'll drop a performance part w/o any worries of it affecting my finish.

Wonder if Moto-Tassinari will cover all the expenses their P.O.S. product cost me? (:

Return Home
5/05/05