I had a strange thing happen to me yesterday, and was wondering if I could get anyone's input on it.
We were moving cattle at my brother's place, and as usual, he wanted me to bring my Xplorer to help (he always wants my Xplorer to come help, me he could care less about me...anyway back to my problem).
Here is the scenario...After spending about an hour trailing cows in 30-33 degree weather, going mostly about 5 MPH, with some periods of idling, and a few short bursts of speed (whenever we had to 'cut off' a wayward cow) getting the cattle moved, we rode our ATV's back to where the pickups were parked, about 4 miles from where we finished. Well, after going about 1 1/2 mile, we came to the first corner, a wide sweeper, that we could go around about 30-35 MPH. I was going about 50 down the stretch, so I had to ease off the throttle some. Well, when I let off the throttle, the engine died completely! I didn't open it back up, I thought if it fires again with the throttle pegged halfway around a corner with loose gravel...not a pretty thought.
I panicked, thinking I had major problems, but I hit the starter, and it was idling away, and ran perfectly the rest of the way home, and for another 15-20 minutes of riding around the yard, just trying to get it to do it again, and it didn't so much as sputter.
Here is my theory...It was just cold enough that when we started going down the road, a little bit of condensation or something on the throttle cable/linkage froze from going fast (it was kept thawn by the engine heat when going slow), causing the ETC to kill the motor. After breaking it loose, it didn't re-freeze, which is why I was fine after that. I wondered if it could be the fuel tank vent, but it didn't sputter, it died like you hit the kill switch.
Any other ideas??

 

Sounds like a possibility of carb icing. That's just a cr-- in the dark though. It takes specific circumstances to make carbs ice, and it varies widely( I've had alchy carbs ice up at 70F on a high humidity day. )

 

Farmer, I'll vote for the ETC. I have had mine do this as well in cold weather so I opened mine up and cleaned it out. If you have a slow or sticky throttle cable you can have a sputter or kill on deceleration. I would lube your cable and look inside the ETC box. All in all if it's just very occasional no big deal anyways, just a safety feature doing it's job sorta. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

 

I would have to agree with your thinking on this Farmer. It of course could be anything but I would feel relatively safe saying it was your ETC.

 

I agree with Elrancho regarding the icing

Polaris carb icing is not uncommen and especially in this area where the humidity is high. At WOT the rate of catch is very high as well. Ussually the first sign of icing is loss of power, feels like it's starving for gas. Just stop and shut down the engine for several minutes and the ice will melt from engine heat. My brother Mark has a Rancher and has never had to deal with this. He says Honda has electric carb heat?
Just my thoughts
Brad

 

Thanks for the input, I STILL am not sure what caused this. Carb icing may be a possibility, as I fill up out of a 300 gallon barrel here on the farm. We just had the barrel filled, before I fueled up the ATV, which would have stirred up any moisture on the bottom. I think it was about 35-40 at the time I filled it, too. We have a filter for the rust, dirt & 'solids' but I don't think it seperates the water. We have had recurring problems with carb icing on our loader tractor because of this, but on the tractor, once you get it to run 5 minutes or so, it will run all day, the only problems are at or just after startup.
I popped the ETC cover off, all was clean & seemed dry. I gave a shot of lube down the cable as best I could, but it seemed free enough without it. Free play seemed fine, too.
Thanks again, for the input. Any advice is welcome. Probably the electronic ignition and carburetion are my main weaknesses when it comes to knowledge of my ATV. If they ever go to fuel injection ... welllll ... [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif[/img]
On the bright side, I have driven another 20 miles, and can't even get it to sputter again, so I guess it can't be anything too serious.
Someone even suggested that since I just recently replaced the piston, and spent the 4 or 5 hours previous to this putt-putting around, a stray piece of carbon could have come loose from the combustion chamber, and temporarily stuck in the spark plug.