wheelsquad

On 5/6/2024 at 9:06 PM, Ken Holmes said:

Hello all!  My name is Ken Holmes, and I am a 77 year old rider of a 2005 Rancher TRX400FA gpscape. Dont do a whole lot of riding now but spend a week in Matachewan area in the spring and another week in the fall. Use the Rancher to tow aluminum boats to different lakes in the area.  Also spend one week in spring in Dorset area. No boat pulling there as way too rough. Just use it to get back into an old hunt camp for a men's get away of which I am considered a youngster. Two of my cronies are well into their 80's, and still use their 4 wheelers.

My main reason for joining is to hopefully glean some information from other riders that do their own maintenance and trouble shooting. I will be scanning the Rancher Forum for answers to an electrical issue and will post a question for my problem specifically.

Thanks again, hope to chat with a few of the members
Ken

Welcome! What specific electrical issue are you having?

Great info that one hopes to never have to utilize  😁

19 hours ago, Fishfiles said:

Maybe the looseness of the screws was the problem ? >>>>   I had a crack at the base of the diaphragm before ,  that was very hard to see and the problem lingered , you had to roll the rubber to see it 

Yep I definitely think it was just the loose screws causing the leak. Ran great for about an hour after I put it all back together. Which was long enough to sell it off  🕵️‍♂️

Went to take it apart and all 3 screws seemed way too loose. Took it apart anyway and couldn't find any tears or other issues with the diaphragm, so I reassembled and all is good. Wife isn't strong enough to consistently be able to pull start it for my oldest kid, so got someone coming to look at it today, and if it sells will be on the lookout for a kids atv with electric start. Market for them has definitely chilled now thankfully, compared to a year ago when I picked this one up. 

Hmmm yeah that seems to be the likely culprit. I'll pull the old one off and my guess is it'll be an old dry cracked diaphragm. New suzuki part doesn't seem to be too much of a gouge at least: https://www.partzilla.com/product/suzuki/13234-18910?ref=9b36355636644e786e3c0d46054a7e84923c26e6, if that is what is needed.

Hey guys

I acquired a 1984 Suzuki LT125 last year for my oldest kid to try, wasn't running at the time, had a local shadetree look at it and he got it going, ran well until we put it away for the winter. Went to run it a few weeks ago, and now it sprays fuel out this hole when running. Also pumps fuel out of the hole as I push and pull on the black knob. Not familiar with this mechanism on a carb. Seems like it could be a primer knob, but why the spewing out the hole? Anyone familiar with these?

Yep definitely needs a re-initializing after replacing any of those parts. The service manual defines pretty well replacement of which parts require it. 

The computer I'm on most of the time has Google Drive access blocked, and yep, pain in the rear to look on phone but that's what I just did. Pg 24-32 says to check the connections, and I can vouch from experience that one time mine got all wonky with shifting and error codes, and a loose connector was the cause. Good thing to try would be to take every connector apart, clean, and re-assemble with dielectric grease.

I don't have access at the moment to the service manual....anyone able to look up what code 12 is?

16 hours ago, jeepwm69 said:

 

Welcome back wheelsquad!  Glad your Rancher is still running strong.

Thanks! Yep still kinda surprised she’s hanging in there. Might be due for a 2nd clutch replacement soon though. 

Any of you guys that were of the opinion to rebuild want either of the OEM honda starters I had to replace this past year? 
 

one is off a 1985 TRX250 Utility, oem starters are no longer available. 
 

the other is this one off the 2004 TRX400FA. Partzilla wants $423 for a new one. 
 

Not sure if they are worth rebuilding or not for an easy flip and sell on fleabay, but figured I’d ask here before I scrap em. Will mail to anyone here that wants em. 

This exact problem is why I love my @retrofan control gizmo. I'm still amazed at how well it works every time I get on my Rancher AT. 

Got the new db starter in today. Along with a new engine sub-harness (one of the wires to the F position sensor was intermittently losing connection). Good thing we had to do them both at the same time too cause same parts had to be removed for access to do both jobs. 

That db starter sure seems stronger than the OEM starter. Has never fired up so fast. 

Great info guys. I ordered a DB that first night. Will definitely hang onto the original one in case the DB tanks. 

 @retro  I'll keep that offer in mind. I won't bother you with the starter right away, this DB one should outlive the rest of Rancher if it gets half the life of the original one. I'm definitely still interested in the trigger link though.  I should show you the latest excal things I've done too.

20 hours ago, toodeep said:

Is your starter that bad that you can't rebuild it?

I don't know if it's that bad inside, but I know my dexterity is too poor (nearly nonexistent) to be able to rebuild it. And the patience of my family members who have dexterity is also non-existent. So plopping in a new starter is our best option. 

Perfect, thanks fellas! 

My 2004 TRX400FA (yeah the turd rancher hondamatic 400AT) needs a new starter motor. OEM is north of $400 from partzilla and rmatvmc wants $360. I've found aftermarket models as low as $48. With that crazy difference, pretty sure I'll go aftermarket. Any of you guys have any particular aftermarket brands that you've had good luck with? 

4 hours ago, shadetree said:

did you mean crf500 ?, never seen a cr500...yet !..lol

https://www.dirtbikes.com/honda-cr500r/

Honda produced them from the mid 1980's up until 2001. One of the most iconic mx bikes of all time! 

13 hours ago, rustynut2 said:

Looked like a perfect shot on a monster, congrats.  It always amazes me how they just show up out of nowhere.  I’m sure you’ll be sharing this story and memories for years to come. Thanks

Thanks. My intended point of impact would have been 3 inches higher. In slo-mo you can see the up and down motion of the lighted nock, cause I just grazed the strap of the blind with the vane of the arrow. Thankfully the high FOC arrow wanted to stay on its intended path enough to get the kill. Broadhead sliced through the elbow joint on the way in, through the very bottom of the heart, and then angled out towards the low guts. I got super lucky.

I see it's easy for guys to notice when I haven't been on in a while 😉

I do check in every now and then. It just so happens that the day before @jeepwm69 tagged me, I shot my best deer ever, and did it with a crossbow. Man, it was an awesome surprise to see him come out into the field. Zero daytime pics of him before that. Just goes to show you never know what can happen last week of Oct or first week of Nov in MN!

On 9/17/2020 at 12:04 AM, retro said:

I gotta get back on this project too. I keep telling myself "soon"... but I still have crap piled up in my shack that I moved from each room while repainting and that work ain't completely finished yet either. Soon....

retro, I was thinking about the mounting bracket for the the gizmo the other day....an adapter could very easily be 3D printed that could go from an existing handlebar type mount to the gizmo itself. so if you have any ideas of how you want that done, sketch something up and i can model it and have it made.

4 hours ago, _Wilson_™ said:

i agree, he does look like a good size buck.  with you in the back ground as scale. 

Yeah he's the heaviest buck I've ever killed. 192 lbs after guts out. Rack not that impressive compared to a lot of the other bucks people in my family shoot, but we had this guy on camera and knew he was going to weigh a lot, and when he came out to the picked corn field he was way bigger than any of the other deer I had seen that week. So I put a 150gr 30 cal bullet right in his gearbox. 

9 hours ago, _Wilson_™ said:

nice score, the buck is kind of hard to make out 8 point ? 

Yep, 8 pointer. Just figured out how to do more than 1 picture per post 🤦‍♂️

And then later in the week I shot 3rd and 4th deer of the year, with rifle and from my adapted ladder stand though. Doe was much closer to the camera in the picture, she actually was only about 110 pounds. Buck weighed 192 dressed though.