After some routine maintenance, I left the choke cable unattached to the carb on my '02 Rancher ES. Then I took it out to the sand dunes for a day of riding.

I've hooked it back up and everything seems fine. But what kind of damage could have occurred? Anything to look for, or just move on and try to be less of an idiot in the future?

 

If the choke was in the OFF position, no problem. If the choke was ON or partially on, that would make it run rich, which isn't good, but it won't do any permanent damage. All it would do is make the quad run bad and maybe foul the plug. You didn't mention that it ran bad, so probably it was off anyway.

 

Actually it was disconnected at the carb. So it was in whatever state the choke would be in when it is not inserted into the threaded hole of the carb. And it did run poorly. I was thinking more along the lines of sand entering the carb and/or engine and causing damage that way.

 

ouch, man..

i dont think too much would have happened, it's a pretty small hole for dirt to get into. Some dirt probably got in, but there's fuel and stuff sloshing in there too so it was probably a minimal amount that got to the engine. I would thing it would have been running lean, since that hole was an air leak, but it also could have been rich since the cable was out of the hole and nothing was plugging the choke jet, so you probably had extra air and fuel going in. If you really wanted to look at it, just take the carb off and clean everything out. I think you'll be fine.