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Snowcat goes up in flames

Melensdad

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
Yikes:

Ski patrol douses burning snowcat

Kevin Hoffman
Mail Staff Writer

A Monarch Mountain snowcat burst into flames Tuesday afternoon scorching about four trees near the east boundary of the ski area west of Garfield.

Monarch chief executive officer Rich Moorhead said the vehicle underwent repairs and was being test-driven in a part of the ski area not yet open to the public.

He said about 2:20 p.m. the driver reported by radio the machine was on fire. Moorehead said Monarch Ski Patrol and other personnel responded with fire extinguishers to the site using snowmobiles.

Chaffee County Fire Protection District was summoned, but Fire Chief Jim Wingert said the blaze was extinguished by the time department firefighters were able to reach the scene.

He said Monarch personnel were in the process of cooling the area with water and foam extinguishers by about 3:30 p.m.

The snowcat was one of the oldest pieces of equipment in the company fleet dating to the 1970s. Moorhead said it is used only for moving and packing snow.

Wingert hadn't been to the fire site, but said, it was his understanding about four trees were scorched from "radiant heat" in addition to vehicle damage.

"I've been on this job 30 years and I've never seen anything like that," Wingert said.

Moorhead agreed it isn't a common occurrence, adding, "It's new to me."
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until they said how old it was i would have guesed bv 206 since uncle sam had so many of them go up in flames we had to put fire supression systems in. as a note if you have never watched ath brake on a bv working its some thing every owner should do under hard braking they throw a lot of sparkes good motivation to keep your tub clean cause they go up quick once they are on fire
 
wow, that would suck, good think they were not out in the back country... I guess you would at least keep warm for a while....
 
I'm glad you posted the note about fire. I took my shop vac and sucked up a bunch of leaves that collected around the exhaust pipe and rear end of my snowcat after it was stored in my grove during the summer. It will have a home next summer in a shed.
 
snowbird said:
I took my shop vac and sucked up a bunch of leaves that collected around the exhaust pipe and rear end . . .
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Well this story was sort of near & dear to me, which is why I posted it. When I fixed my starter (again) this year I started up my Snow Trac and let it run to use up as much of the older fuel as possible that was in the tank. The problem was that a mouse had built a nest on the top of the engine and it started to smoke. It never burst into flames but it smoldered for a good while. I blew out the debris with the air hose and solved the problem, but it was in an area where you just couldn't really see anything (under a heat shield).
 
Same thing happens with skid steers and log skidders a lot. Get some leaves in there and have an oil or fuel leak and they will go up fast. Saw it happen to a Bobcat 2years ago at a place loading up mulch. Had a bunch of mulch in the engine compartment and after changing fuel filters to make it run better they did not clean it out. The mulch soaked up the fuel they slopped and it cooked down to scrap metal in no time. I drop my belly pans on mine and pressure wash it every year for that reason plus it is a lot easier to work on.
 
B_Skurka said:
Well this story was sort of near & dear to me, which is why I posted it. When I fixed my starter (again) this year I started up my Snow Trac and let it run to use up as much of the older fuel as possible that was in the tank. The problem was that a mouse had built a nest on the top of the engine and it started to smoke. It never burst into flames but it smoldered for a good while. I blew out the debris with the air hose and solved the problem, but it was in an area where you just couldn't really see anything (under a heat shield).
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Do you think it was a Indiana Mouse or maybe a Wisconsin Mouse ? Those mice from Wisconsin are nothing but trouble makers ...........
 
B_Skurka said:
Well this story was sort of near & dear to me, which is why I posted it. When I fixed my starter (again) this year I started up my Snow Trac and let it run to use up as much of the older fuel as possible that was in the tank. The problem was that a mouse had built a nest on the top of the engine and it started to smoke. It never burst into flames but it smoldered for a good while. I blew out the debris with the air hose and solved the problem, but it was in an area where you just couldn't really see anything (under a heat shield).
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you guys ith vw engines take note of this happened to me in the dark the brass inlet port on my solex carb is swedged in to the body and througe som freaf accedent most likely relating to heat and cold -20 that night that tube came loose and the engine died so i cranked several times looked at the blach hole under the hood seen nothing walked 2 blocks to the shop got the truck and towed it over to the shop and pushed it in to thaw as the heat started to set in is i started to smell the gas and threw down absorbant diapers in the engine and under the trac upon ivestigation i found the engine covered with gas and also the distributour the - 25 saved my cat hav it been around 30 or the engine was up to operating temp the results would have been different inspect our fuel system i now remove those piipes that are swedged and put some sleave retainer on them for insurance.
 
Well we had our first good ride of the season today. Took it out on the roadway, down into the farmfields and back into the woods, along the creeks and back up the roadways. All went pretty well until I pulled back into the workshop and noticed it was SMOKING from the engine compartment.

Apparently I did not get all the mouse nest out from around the engine.

Fortunately I got enough of it out that there were no real issues. I took the air hose and blasted the last big bits out. There may be some smaller bits of nest left in there but I don't think it will be any real problem. I'll blow it out again with the air hose before I start it up again, just to make sure.

On the bright side, Melen drove the Snow Trac for the first time! It was her first time ever driving a manual shift vehicle and she did pretty well. I won't say there wasn't some panic (mostly mine) but she got the hang of it and drove it very well. She would not drive it up the hill to the road. Its pretty steep and my wife was actually up on the roadway freaking out. I'm not sure why, we drive the tractor up that same slope in the summertime so its not a big deal. Still watching a 2 track snowcat go up a steep grade is sort of fun, when it gets to the top and the center of gravity shifts and it plops forward onto the road it a fun sensation for the riders!

So all in all a good ride. Still had plenty of gas in the fuel tank when we got home too, so no walking! I just hope this is the last time I have to deal with mouse nest in the engine compartment.
 
glaad you had a good ride i was stuck with kids fighting all weekend my new starter took a dump had some nice weather for a day or 2 back to nest's dont forget about our feather covered friends opened up an air cleaner in one of ur f800's and found a bird nest this summer. no harm done their but what if it was sitting on the exhaust under that fiberglass hood.
 
After a $4,000 experiance with a Caterpillar combine....:sad:(wiring loom) I have become very diligent about baiting mice. To the tune of a couple of hundred per year in Decon type products. In the cabs of my eqiuiptment, Case/IH sells a small bag of pot pori that is supposed to ward off mice. I am trying it as well this winter. It smells good sort of....I put some in our Corrvett and my 72 T/A as well. We'll see if it works. Must be dilligent, the mice certainly are!

Also in the "car" shed I made very sure no entraces for mice exsist, this along with mouse bait seems to be working well these past years.

I wonder if some one bottled and sold cat piss, if this would work in tight areas in my farming equiptment......:brows: ( away from the inside of the cab:smile:)

Regards, Kirk
 
Something else to keep in mind......squirrels/chipmunks!!!

A female co-worker today came to me asking me to come take a look at her car since it would barely turn over. I go to turn it over and it would barely crank. I figure ok......battery's dead. I've got a set of cables in the truck. No problem. I pull my truck up along side, pop the hood on both vehicles, haul out the cables and go to hook them up. Guess what I found when I took the plastic cover off her battery????

Yup!!!! The battery case was full of peanuts and the little bugger had started to chew through the negative wire going to the battery post. I cleaned out the peanuts(trying not to laugh of course) hooked up the battery cables and it fired right up. I told her to keep it running and get it to a garage to get the cable changed ASAP.
 
groomerguyNWO,:smile:

Once on my first drive of the spring with the Trans Am, I stopped at a store, and noticed smoke coming from the rear of the shaker hood scoop. It turned out a mouse over the winter had partially filled the air cleaner housing with dog food! Some of it ran down a heat riser tube onto the exhaust manifold, and smoldered there. Not very nice smelling either.:ermm:

And yes I bet a chipmunk or a squirrel would do amazing things if given the time and a chance!

Regards, Kirk
 
Mice can get into everything. Last year, I was giving dad a hand hauling his camper out of winter storage. We entered the camper for the first time. Everything looked normal. Until we opened the bathroom overhead cabinet. We quickly discovered a bag full of peanuts was stashed in there by the little buggers. Dad got into the habit years ago of setting mouse traps everywhere throughout the camper when he stored it. Sure enough, one of the traps had a mouse in it. This is a fairly new 5th wheel also. Needless to say, I set mouse traps in every nook and crany in my camper.

A few years ago, my brother had a similar mouse experience. Only his kinda stunk....literally!!! Seriously, who thinks to probe the sewar pipe on their camper every spring before emptying it the first time each season. The buggers built a nest about halfway up the sewar drainage pipe on his camper. When he went to empty it out after the first weekend of the season, he pulled the drainage handle and nothing came out. He nealt down with a flashlight to have a look in the pipe to see what was blocking it. Just then, the mouse nest let go and out came.....well....you get the picture. It wasn't a pretty site out there in the bush 30 miles from the nearest shower.
 
Gee Al,

Do you think yours smells like a cats? I am assuming a tom cat here...

Maybe you should consider seeing a doctor about that!:yum:

But really, I don't think the mice would react the same way....

Regards, Kirk
 
n my buisness i find mummified mice all over engines the crawl up when the engine is warm go to sleep on the intake and freeze over night best laugh i got was slipping one in to the cash register the poor girl tending the register had to change her underware when the register opened and she had that dead mouse starig at her. than several years later the boss put in a new register and after 2 days we opened up and it was dead so the company's repair man came out and opened up the register and the perp wa slaying there dead seems he relieved him self on the circut board and killed both him self and the cash register needless to say it was not covered under warnty and the boss was grumpy all week over having to buy another cash register.
 
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