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Thread: Yet another new member from Nebraska

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Nov 2019
    Location
    Southwest Nebraska
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    10

    Yet another new member from Nebraska

    Greetings from Southwest Nebraska!

    My story starts a couple weeks ago. I was sitting on the couch Sunday afternoon letting my dinner settle while looking at Facebook marketplace. Someone 45 miles from me was offering two free three wheelers. They had me at free, so I hooked up the mower trailer and loaded up a pretty complete 1985 ATC250ES and a rough 1985 ATC250SX.

    I didn't spend a lot of time inspecting either machine when loading, and when I got home I realized the Big Red had major issues--namely the right engine case was broken and end of the crankshaft was broken off. The 250SX engine looked complete and after cleaning the carburetor the SX ran. The engine from the SX is now in the ES and runs well.

    I built a 48" snow blade for Big Red. So far I have a battery, foam air filter element, and a new front tire in this 'free' machine.

    I am a self-employed welder, mechanic, electrician, and entry level machinist. I also enjoy running a Behinger x32 digital sound board and playing bass guitar for my church.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Location
    Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada
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    812
    Welcome...post up some pics of whatcha got!
    1985 Honda ATC 250ES
    1985 Honda ATC 250SX
    1984 Honda ATC 200M
    1983 Honda ATC 200
    1984 Honda ATC 110

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2019
    Location
    Southwest Nebraska
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    10
    This is the runner. Parts machine is in storage elsewhere.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version. 

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    Last edited by Deerehauler; 12-04-2019 at 11:39 PM.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    USA
    --
    4,114
    Are you interested in trying to fix the 250es engine up? I should have a good used crank + right side cover. Defo want to investigate why it's broken though. Also what year is the 250es, 85 was most common, and some times parts are 85 only vs 86 & 87.

    Kind of ironic, I also run a 32 channel Behinger, but an Analog one. Never had proper training on the board, just what people told me and over time I came to the conclusion that running things as a base level of 0 gives the best sound with a solid input level. Someone else setup the Behinger (recent upgrade) and all the channels come in nice and hot, then the sliders are super low, and the main outs are low and the amps are cranked all the way up >,<. I set the mains to unity (0 point) while turning down the amps and man it's so much cleaner sounding already vs the last unit.

    Since the 250sx engine is in the 250es frame, you're gearing will be a little higher than stock. If you rode a 250es with the stock setup you'd notice it had more power for take off etc, but high gears it would rev out before hitting max speed. 250es stock tire size is 25in, 250sx is 22in, the final gearing is about the same for both if you account for tire size, difference in gearing is in the engine's transmission and rear diff. The 250es and 250sx are effectively the same engine besides the gearing difference and color difference with possible minor differences. Both use the same CDI box too as long as you match up the connector type (85 vs 86-87).

    Looking at the photo, I see the front fender is trashed as well as the front rack. I think I have an "ok" front fender maybe even a good one if it bothers you at all. The front rack I suspect you'd probably build yourself vs buying? I think I have a spare bent up one which should be about perfect for a machine being used for work vs looks. Not sure how killer shipping would be, both large items, but I'd prefer to ship them in their own boxes so the rack can't damage the fender if the box is thrown or dropped.

    Also looking at the pics, I see the head is dirty, but the cylinder is fairly clean. I'd say check the valve adjuster caps to make sure they are tight (not super tight) and if so, remove them and replace the O-Rings on them. Clean the head with some de-greaser and if the oil residue comes back you should be able to see the souce a little easier. Could be the valve cover leaking which I'd suggest Gray RTV, much easier to work with than Hondabond and similar named products. If I recall correctly, some of the valve cover bolts have copper washers to seal the bolt holes from leaking and the oil tube the runs from the crank case to the valve cover. Not really a big issue with the leaking top end, just something that could be fixed to keep cooling at peak performance and no oil disappearing over time.

    You're also missing the plastic side cover(s) but not really a big deal unless you want an OEM correct machine. They do cover the electricals up a bit and last I checked there is an aftermarket option for them. OEM I suspect is around $100 used per side.


    What kind of machinist equipment do you have? There's sometimes a demand for custom made parts so possible if you offer services people might take you up on making some parts =).

    I'm just starting to get an entry level grasp on circuit level electronics, I suspect by electrician you mean building electrical though? I recently built a thermostat that controls two blowers (2 zones I guess it would be called) and the programming logic controls them from 3 temp sensors (10k Thermistors). That was my first "real" electrical project. The code was stupid easy once I got the right math worked out for the readings to temp conversions.

  5. #5
    maxdallasfan's Avatar
    maxdallasfan is offline At The Back Of The Pack Arm chair racerAt the back of the pack
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    New Jersey
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    381
    Free always happens to the other guy, never me.
    My ride:
    1985 Honda 250es

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Nov 2019
    Location
    Southwest Nebraska
    --
    10
    Thanks for your reply. Both my machines are 1985s, one in April and the other in July if memory serves. I put my power washer away for the winter so Big Red is still dirty. Some warm Saturday morning I might run it down to my former employer (John Deere dealer) and give it a quick squirt. I downloaded the shop manual for the powertrain and will study it a little closer when I get closer to deciding whether to repair or part out the 250 ES OEM engine. I would bet the engine for the 250 ES is in better condition judging by the relative good appearance of the ES versus the trashed appearance of the SX. Since I discovered 5th gear is out on the SX powertrain I might be looking into doing some more swapping, but not right away. I am hoping to make a few bucks pushing snow.

    Re the Behringer X32--you want to run your input gains as hot as possible WITHOUT clipping. I like to get midway into the yellow, that way I have a little headroom. I also like to run channel faders at equity and DCAs near equity. My amps are digital so there really isn't a trim (volume) control on them so I run mains at -22, which puts around 85 db into the roughly 60X90 room. I can get to 110 db with little effort. My sound experience has been with two Yamaha OV1s tied together to get 32 inputs and the last 5-6 years with this X32. I am still learning but feel confident I can deliver a good sounding experience for my church family.

    As far a machining, my lathe is a Fitchburg with 9" throw and 6 foot bed. It was made in 1898, yes 1898. I have all the change gears, a steady rest, and a 4 jaw chuck. It is good enough for building stuff for myself or making special tools and drivers for my buddies at John Deere. It originally was powered with a flat belt driven from a line shaft, but the previous owner rigged up a Muncie SM420 4 speed transmission driven by an 3/4hp electric motor. I have a Becker horizontal mill made around 1905. I rigged up a x axis power feed using a treadmill motor driving a 60:1 right angle gear box from a center pivot irrigation system. I have made gears for the apron feed shaft on the lathe using this mill and have cut several keyways in shafts. I specialize more in welding aluminum (MIG and TIG) and stainless (TIG or SMAW). I have a Hossfeld #2 bender equipped with mostly pipe bending dies. I hope to expand my bending die selection so I can bend angle iron and handrails.

    I have done lots of commercial wiring off and on over the years. I used to work on new and used electric drive center pivots, so I got used to 480 volts surrounded by up to 2000 gpm of water flying around. I have done a little electronic work and bought an old 453 Tektronics scope last summer to play around with. Thank heaven for YouTube videos--I am amazed at all the demonstration videos for technical studies. I hardly watch TV anymore, I find the videos much more educational and entertaining.

    Most of my stuff is pretty old and doesn't all look like new, but everything works. The plastics on Big Red are not a big priority right now. I likely will not paint the blade until I have used it for a few storms to make sure everything works as it should. I HATE grinding off paint to weld something and I would rather make sure my design is sound before I doll it up with paint.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    USA
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    4,114
    Yea I get you on the youtube thing, I watch a lot of misc tech videos while working on harnesses and such. I do a lot of programming on the side, so when I'm researching a function etc I'll watch the vid. Not good for learning since split focus, but it gets in my mind atleast x thing is possible using this that or the other.

    You're equipment is much older than I expected, don't really know a whole lot about maching equipment but I suspect new vs old isn't really a big deal, maybe some less fancy features, but the old machines will be built 100x heavier and more servicable, atleast I'd think.

    At my first job I had to do an inventory of "legacy" computers running windows xp or older for kind of a chemical plant. They used MASSIVE power in their reactors, like 1/4 to 1/3 of the plant was power buildings, you walk in the room and you could feel the power in the room. I saw a few things running off 600v. The reactors were in the 6 digits for power usage per reactor, I think it was in amps but might have been watts. They had huge coolers plus ponds and the reactor buildings were still easily 90+ and they had all the doors opened and such lol. Oh yea, the first floor of those buildings was another power room. They draw so much power they have to shut them down in steps, if the circuit is broken under load, the copper vaporizes. The person assigned to kill a reactor sounds an alarm and wears what looks like a bomb suit. The alarm is the dive alarm from a sub lol. Really crazy setup, huge money and realistically not many workers so makes sense why they have their own engeering team and such and have the money for a $120k+ "client" super computer that weighed something like 275lbs from SGI. Can't remember how much the "server" was, but it was a blade server, I think it took up 1/3 of a rack (reference image below each of those boxes is a rack). Kind of funny the super computer client replaced around a $20k "super computer" which was just a high end consumer desktop with 3 or 4 nvidia super high end cards for running science simulations on. Went from 3 days to process a simulation to like 3 hours.


  8. #8
    Join Date
    Oct 2014
    Location
    NEBRASKA,USA
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    104
    Where at in southwest Nebraska? I’m from Norfolk Nebraska

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Nov 2019
    Location
    Southwest Nebraska
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    10
    McCook, home of the Bison

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