Meow
 

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That's a 1972 Arctic Cat Kitty Kat. My Dad bought that when my oldest daughter was about two hours old. She's 42 now. It has gone through my two kids and my brothers' four kids. There have been times when we've had it out that complete stangers would walk up to me and say "Shut up and take my money." I didn't.

It ended up in Maine with my oldest and her two. And that's where it stayed, not running, for over 10 years. My daughter has some mechanical skills, her hubby, not so much.

I had them bring it back to Illannoy last Sunday so I can see what's what with it. Found out that it has a spark that will knock you on your butt. Pulled the carb and...ICK! Threw that in the ultra sonic cleaner. Pulled the tank and petcock. Double ICK! Solid crud in the tank and the petcock was completely plugged with some soft grey crud.

All cleaned up and back together. Waiting on some fuel filters from Amazon that are supposed to be here today. If I don't have too many Grandpa duties this morning, I'm going to run to Home Depot/Lowes/Menards for a one gallon can of 24:1 pre mix and NAPA for a new NGK spark plug. With the wheel kit on there, it's one more thing the grandkids can ride around on this weekend while I have the whole fam damily here.

It will stay here for the upcoming winter for Owen to play with, then be trucked up to my brothers place next year for his grand kids. He was gifted another one this week. I've lost count but he may be able to field his own baseball team.

It runs. Not great, but it runs. Starts on one pull but carb adjustments are needed. So that I'm not pissing in the wind, I found a service manual on cd that should get me squared away.

And the grandkids are asking "What's a CD?" the very same way this generation asked "What's a record?" I have the old 8-track player out of my mom's 1973 Fiat 124 Spyder. The hilarious part is that she has a brother named Tony who was the chief mechanic at the service station in the little town in PA they grew up in. Anyways, I'd be happy to trade the 8-track player for the car! Not too many of them left running around these days...

Glad it's running and the little ones will be able to have some fun with it!

Friend of the family had one and I rode it a few times when I was young. It was a blast as it fell into the "more fun to ride a small bike fast" adage.

Cheesy, what size motor is in these?

It's a 60cc Kawasaki, David.
My kids ran the snot out of it as I'm sure my brothers kid did. I detuned it for my oldest daredevil granddaughter because she has a tendency 'act now, think later'. Youngest grandson seems to at least think that 'this might hurt' before he acts, so I am undoing that today.

The manual I got wasn't a lot of help with the Kitty Kat as it doesn't cover anything other than specs. It covered the full size machines like the Puma, Lynx, Panther, and Cheetah. If I ever come across a 71-73 Wankel powered sled, I'm covered.

If it sat for 10 years, the first thing I'd check is mouse houses in either the air box or exhaust. Maybe cracks in intake rubber.

Have you checked here?

https://kittycatparts.com/servicemanuals.html

It's for a later model, but wonder if the site can get you an earlier one.

https://www.kittycatparts.com/

First place I checked.

Magician-No air box, just a basic air filter mounted to the carb. Spark arrester on muffler so no mousies can get in. Carb is mounted to a cast manifold and I replaced the o-ring between the carb and manifold.

There's a site called snowmobileforum.com There are some really good guys on there that can probably help you out. Only thing I can remember about old Kawy engines were that the internal seals tended to go out.

Thanks for the info. Seals are almost 50 years old, so just going change those out anyway. Seems like a tired condenser, too. Gets hot, no start.

I have until winter.

The seal kit and the electronic ignition showed up for the sled a couple weeks ago. I got around to farting around with it yesterday.
I have the engine 99% apart. The JIS head crankcase screws were installed by Godzilla and his kid. Even using my hoity toity Vessel JIS Impact screwdriver and a 3lb thumb buster, those screws haven't budged. I dicked around with the screws for about 20 minutes, until I missed and shared some skin with the hammer. I quit for the day there. Worse comes to worse, I'll drill off the heads and replace them with 21st century Allen head screws.

The engine itself is pretty clean inside and out. After pulling the blower cover, though, it was obvious that the flywheel side shaft seal was leaking. Pulling the flywheel confirmed it. The points, condenser, and coils(there is a lighting coil)were coated with oil. I'm surprised it fired at all with what looked like a .040 point gap.

I was going to replace the points and condenser with new but found that those are unobtainium, so went with the electronic ignition. Over the years of running this old crap, best to move on to more modern stuff to keep it working. I could have probably found an NOS condenser, but that NOS condenser is also 50 years old. Probably work okay. For a while.

Any chance you could use your fancy induction heater on those screws ?

I thought about that but three of the four screws are recessed.

Got 'em out with no drama or heartbreak. Turns out that the Vessel impact screwdriver was too small. The JIS screw heads were the equivalent of Phillps #3. My other fancy scmhancy impact driver set has a long #3 bit. I tapped the bit into the screw head, fit the impact driver socket onto the bit, and used a 1/2 ratchet with a steady pressure until the screws broke loose.

Crankcase is back together. Taking a break before going back to scraping off the gasket that's married to the bottom of the cast iron jug.

More headaches, albeit minor ones.

The engine is 85% back together. Next issue is the ignition. What I have and what the instructions show for the electronic upgrade are two different things. First time in my life that I've ever seen a condenser with 3 wires coming off of it. One to the coil, one to the points, and one to the kill switch. Easy enough to figure out, but geez, confusing at first glance.
Other minor headache is that the coating on the coil is cracked in several places. I was going to give Flex Seal a try on the coil but the cure time is nuts. I'll probably just do JB Weld but I'll make that decision after a thorough dousing of contact cleaner on the coil.

Some success. The electronic ignition module has an output that will jumpstart your ticker, whether it needs it or not.
Right now, it looks like a fuel problem again. Something funky with that petcock.

Gave the 60cc Kawasaki the middle finger and walked away from it for a while yesterday. Lost spark after double checking the timing. I don't know right now if the module failed, there's a bad ground, or a wire broke behind the flywheel. I know it isn't the kill switch, because it isn't connected.

I'll look into it after I get back from lunch with Harold this afternoon. I'll have more insight as to what's happened in Beaufort. Sounds pretty interesting.

Well hell. Looks like the Kitty Kat is going to be the recipient of a 79cc Predator engine. The no longer available coil in the Kawa engine is shorted and fried two electronic ignition modules. Giving that engine the sign of the cross.

So, here we are.
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And now we have this.
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Not quite the bolt in I was told it would be.
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Oh, well. I'll get it in. it's not like I'm trying to shove a Wedge into the DeSoto.

Mounted in place.

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Wasn't all that hard after removing the exhaust and air filter. I was going to use 1" square tube to mount the Predator to the Kawa plate, but that placed the engine too high and the hood wouldn't close. So, I went with the plate supplied with the Predator. Drilled into the Kawa plate and the front cross member. Made use of my new Riv nut tool.
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This went too easy so I'm figuring I screwed up something and will be doing this over next weekend.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to buy some Predator speed parts.

Do you have a picture with the Kawasaki engine still in? Just curious as to what that looked like.

So far I've used the Predators in two applications. One in a snow blower (212cc) and the other in a leaf shreader/blower (173cc). Both have been great and fairly easy to install. Oddly, both have replaced Tecumseh engines that were shaking themselves to death.

No speed parts yet...

I put a Predator 212 on a go-cart that found it's way into my garage, and an old pressure washer about seven or eight years ago. Overall, I'm super happy with them. The Cars and Cameras guys on YouTube are single-handedly keeping Harbor Freight in business with as many of those engines as they buy. I've been thinking about digging up an old motorcycle and doing a Predator engine swap and turning the bike into an automatic with a torque converter and jackshaft setup. That project is going to have to wait until we get the new house sorted, though.

I’m out of town until Saturday so I’ll get a pic of the Kawa engine then.

As far as ‘Speed’ parts, cone type air cleaner. Only because the stock one wouldn’t clear the steering column. DIY exhaust because, see above. Copper exhaust gasket, just because. #80 x 2 jets because I don’t really know which carb is on this thing. Throttle kit to eliminate the governor because I want the grandsons to go through life wide eyed.

Here are the requested pics of the Kitty Kat engine. I dug around but could not find one with the engine in place.
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I've had that roller skate case since grade school. I was a rink rat and I several more. I know where at least two are that I can access.

Thanks for the motor pics. I can see now the challenges ahead for you because of the different locations of the carb and exhaust. Are going to be using the stock tank?

The plan is to use the stock fuel tank for now. The hood closes without interference.

So, at an impasse until the other parts show up. I did get the brake relocated. That required fabbing a new mount. The mount took two hours to make. A half hour of that was setting up to do a two minute weld job. Five minutes of that was just getting an arc struck because I do stick maybe twice a year anymore.

While waiting for the parts to arrive, I decided to attack the slop in the steering. Need to replace the ‘ball joint’ and bush a couple plates for the drag link. That’s a next week project.

All the parts are here. Yay!

Muddling along here. The weekends' water leak in the laundry room sort of fouled up any plans of getting this worked on. To quote John Lennon, "Life happens when you've made other plans."

So, in between paperwork, brush fires at corpulent, and customers that won't RTFM, I managed to fit the new jet, air filter, and just about have the throttle set up. The throttle has been a booger because I'm trying not to hack the original cable in case my buddy from in Finland can come up with a workable ignition for the Kawa engine. He did good on the Maggot.

I just need to drill two holes to wrap up the throttle then onto the exhaust. I bought a flange and have a few feet of 1" thin wall tubing, so we'll see how much of that will end up in the 'Experience Pile'.

Only thing I 'have' to do for work today is the annual 'Butthurt Feelings Quiz'. Once that's done, I'm in the garage.

Throttle is in and working. The entire length of thin wall tubing ended up in the experience pile because it was too thin. The tube collapsed in the bender, even with a mandrel. So, Plan B was some thicker walled 1010 and my extension bar on the bender. I have a smelly heat pad on each of my shoulders right now.

I'm picking up a muffler at NAPA after my run to Indiana for work. Weld it all up and I should be golden.:tup:

A lot of the new exhaust ended up on the 'Experience Pile' today. Geez. Should have checked the hood clearance BEFORE I welded everything together. Ah, well. The welding looked crappy anyway.

In other news, the Kitty Kat will be staying at Cheesy Manor for the duration. My brother doesn't want it back as he has more than enough sleds and his grandkids don't come up to the northern Wisconsin cottage in the winter.

Second time was the charm.

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I used 3/4" conduit this time and things turned out a lot better. Also used the Lincoln 100 wire feed unit instead of the stick inverter this time. The little poop also runs, too. Won't move yet until I install the new chain and chain guard.

Nice. While I was reading the other post I was thinking, "I wonder if conduit would work". I've used it for making and/or extending motorcycle and ATV racks.

I also like the coupler you added so you could attach the muffler. I've put that in the brain vault for any future projects.

That piece of conduit was destined for the Urals' kayak rack but got repurposed for the exhaust. I may cut the chain to fit this afternoon after the in-laws leave and let the grandsons have at it.

I think I'm done.
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Now for some white stuff to try it out on. Not sure when that's going to happen though. Rain last night and 45 degrees today in mid, lower, west Michigan. I'm assuming its pretty much the same in Illinois.

Good question and something also in the back of my mind. I'm hoping that the exhaust being 6 or so inches from the hood and directed towards one of the many vents will help. Will keep an eye on it.

david-No kidding. At least I have the optional wheel kit. Maybe I should put my snowshoes and fat bike back in the attic.

Cheesy, I can't help but notice in the middle and bottom picture the ubiquitous bottle of 3-in-1 oil. That stuff is great for just about anything out there! :)

As long as it's the petroleum based 3-in-1 and not the veggie based stuff. The veggie based stuff becomes like glue when it evaporates. I've had to take a hammer to some Sturmey Archer three speed hubs to get them apart when that stuff dried. Now you know my feelings on a certain kind of 3-in-1 oil.

Took the Kitty Kat on it's maiden ride this morning. While riding on the 50 year old wheel kit, I found it to be, to quote Ken Richardson, BRM engineer who was developing the early Triumph TR series cars, "Bloody awful. It's a death trap." :D

It steered okay on the wheels when the max speed was 8 mph. At a max speed somewhere in the 25 mph range, again, bloody awful. I dumped myself in the first fifty feet and left some knee skin behind. I never did get to WOT but the little turd was still pulling uphill while my life was flashing before my eyes.

It's obvious that the semi pneumatic tires are part of the problem. I'll see about improving that with some real tires. The steering alignment is off, too. At 8 mph, it wasn't an issue. Now it is.

Still, pretty impressed how well it all works together and accelerates. I expect Owen will have it doing snowmobile wheelies.:tup: It should haul ass if we ever get any snow.

My guardian angel must have stepped out for a smoke break yesterday for my flight off the Kitty Kat. Not only did I get road road rash on my knee, bruised both my right foot and hip, and got some more road rash on my right shoulder. Not a comfortable nights sleep.

I imagine this is how it goes with my guardian angel...

Angel-"He can't hurt himself on that little thing. I'm just gonna step out for a smoke." Hears engine revving and looks around the corner as I shoot down the drive way and suddenly lose control, causing me to exit said 'little thing'.

Angei-"Aw, Christ! Not again." Throws down his butt while muttering, "Stupid SOB. Now I gotta fill out reams of paperwork. Again. I'm gonna ask for a transfer."