| Reasonable hovering weather continues. Temperature around 0C (32F) and not much wind. | |||
| Saturday was scheduled for snowmobile repair. And if we can finish that in time maybe some hovering too. | |||
| My father-in-law has a Lynx 5900 GLX snowmobile. Lynx is
a finnish brand, now part of Ski-Doo Bombardier. Uses Rotax 503 air-cooled
single carb engine. And would not start after summer. There was no spark.
We located the fault to either CDI-unit or ignition coil. Thanks to help
from Tero R. (Finnish
UH builder) i was pretty sure it's the black CDI-unit that was not
working. Found a new replacement unit for 50€ (dealer wanted 90€).
We put that in and it started right away.
Two lessons to learn from this since this engine is also used on hovercrafts: 1) CDI-unit will break (sooner or later) because resin that is used to hide the electronics will crack and let moisture in. This happens overnight or during longer period machine is not used. By bringing this unit in and placing it in a warm place for couple of days and then installing it back may give you little bit more time, but it's time to start to look around for a new one. If you check the back side of CDI-unit and find a crack then i'd suggest removing it drying it and putting Sikaflex/3M sealing adhesive. 2) It would be perhaps worthwhile to check resistance values between different leads in your system while it's still working and writing them down. Incase you run into problems it's much easier to check these values according to your earlier notes and verify which doesn't match. |
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| We were done quite quickly - also with the short test-drives. So we had some time to hover too. Or i did, my father-in-law continued to test-drive the snowmobile. | |||
| Before starting the engine i adjusted the idle and after starting it adjusted it even more. Engine was now idling at 1000-1100rpm. I headed to the bay. Route there was quite a tricky one since ice had a slope towards banks and craft naturally tended to slide sideways rather than go to desired direction. Had to keep the throttle at minimum because of the very slippery conditions. Had to keep my head down because i forgot my hovering gear back home. | |||
| There wasn't too many fishermen on ice and i headed to SE along the larger bay. Took it quite carefully since i didn't know if there were some man build obstacles along my route. For the first time i even closed the soft top while under operation to keep the road draft outside. | |||
| There wasn't really much to see out there. Few occasional fishermen who seemed to pay no attention to me at all. I reached the river delta and decided to turn back. | |||
| I increased the speed on my way back since i pretty much saw that i could do that without ramming over any fishing equipment. Also had all the wind we had was now assisting me. It funny how much the stopping distance increases when you switch from head wind to tail wind. On ice, that is. Not so much difference on water though. | |||
| After 45 minutes of successful hovering i was back at the hoverport. As i landed the craft i noticed that tach was again showing 2000rpm even at idle so carb is probably freezing. Well, have to address that later. Didn't have my GPS with me to check the mileage or top speed, but never throttled more than one third of the full throttle. Also i noticed that driving while seated can be done even in tighter spots. Usually i tend to stick my head out because i can. Now the top was closed so i didn't have that option and everything went just OK. Have to scrape ALL the windows clean before starting next time though... | |||