Sunday Jan 28,2001
Last night we had planned a little soiree up at the Never Summer Ranch. It
started snowing pretty hard, however, and the snowpacked roads kept all but
the hardiest souls from making the journey. We built a large bonfire and
burned a couple of christmas trees, grilled some brats, and sat around the
campfire drinking beers and watching the snow fall. Eventually, we decided
to fire up one of the weasels and I let my neighor Matt get behind the sticks
and drive it around the property. Things were going pretty well until we
went over a pretty good bump at which point sparks started dancing around in
the engine compartment followed by flashes of bright light and a large vapor
cloud. We all scrambled out of the weasel and started looking for a fire
extinguisher. (For some reason, my weasel doesn't have one. I have the
bracket, but no extinguisher). I reached in the cockpit and shut off the
ignition. The grounded battery cable was glowing bright orange and giving
off so much light and smoke that everyone retreated to a safe distance from
the weasel.
We abandoned it as it was too cold and dark to do tend to. Upon closer
inspection this morning, we determined that when we went over the bump, the
battery turned over in the battery tray and shorted out. Then the grounded
battery wire got so hot that it burned all of the insulation off of the wire
and the 2 gauge wire started to melt into little rivers of copper. I
replaced the battery cables with 2 gauge battery wires from Checkers Auto
parts for $18 and it fired right up. It had been snowing all day, so I took
it through the mountains for a couple of laps just to make sure it was
running ok and then parked it back under the house. Lesson learned: Anchor
the battery and take a fire extinguisher.
Happy Weaseling,
Rob Kiser
P.S. - After a bit of scrounging, I have acquired some pieces to get one of
the weasels swimming. I have recently purchased the front and rear flotation
tanks, two rudders, a tiller, and some of the capstan winch parts. I still
need many parts to get it swimming including the surf shield, the rudder
yokes, the track aprons, etc. If anyone has leads on this equipment it would
be greatly appreciated.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 05 2001 - 07:13:52 PST