Homemade Throttle Cable 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
Since I was 10 years old (I am 20 now) I have been working and restoring vintage snowmobiles as a hobby. It is a great passion of mine, and also almost one time indirectly led me to almost gaining a Darwin Award of my own.
To those who are unfamilliar of the basic design of a snowmobile, you drive the machine sitting down and with the aid of a set of handlebars for steering, and on the handlebars is a thumb-throddle lever and hand brake lever, both commonly attatched by cables to their respective positions on the carburetor and brake assembly.
One perticular snowmobile I was working on, a 1979 Ski-doo Elan, was in perticularly bad shape, yet this would never stop me from driving it. Lacking proper brake and throddle cables, I let the idea of letting brakes go to caution and constructed my own throddle cable out of a piece of broken piano wire and hardened plastic tubing. Earlier before I did this "repair", I was working on the steering system. While finishing my work, I forgot to reinsert a very important lockpin in the handlebars which lock it securely in place to the snowmobile. The snowmobile also had no kill or ignition switch of any sorts, it was wired directly to run on it's own.
I should have known much better, even being only 15 years old at the time... this was disaster waiting to happen. While idiling, the snowmobile not in motion, the rear held up freely by a stand, the throddle performed rather well, well enough to lead me to bileve I could trust it driving around my large open yard. Pointing the snowmobile down the driveway - which leads to a busy 2 lane highway - I intended to drive it down the driveway a bit to turn into my yard off to the side.
So, hopping onto a ramshakle snowmobile with no brakes, faulty throddle and steering and no way to shut the engine off in an emergency, I proceded to slowly drive down the driveway. Now that pin for the handlebars I told you about, it's job is to hold the handlebars in place. Without the pin, when I leaned back while moving down the driveway, the handlebars slipped out of place, rendering the snowmobile unsteerable.
Normally this would not be a major problem in itself, but the action of the handlebars popping out of place also managed to pull my homemade throddle cable taunt, opening the throddle on my engine wide open. The sudden increase of speed threw me off the snowmobile - but the sleeve of my loose winter jacked caught on the handlebars, dragging me at top speed alongside.
So here was my out of control snowmobile, going at top speed, dragging me along with it, directly aimed at a busy highway, with no chance of stopping, frequented by dump trucks from mines and logging trucks from nearby woodmills. My driveway is only 25 or so yards long, and a snowmobile can and will accellerate rather quickly. In the blink of an eye I was almost on the highway...
... then suddenly, for no perticular reason, the snowmobile made a quick sharp darting turn to the left (most likely by the uneven surface of the driveway), promptly smashing into a hard packed snowbank just at the driveways entrance, stopping the snowmobile, but causing me to crash into it, spraigning the wrist I was caught on the snowmobile on and giving me a nasty bruise on my cheek where it collided with the engine.
Just as I crashed into the snowbank, 2 logging trucks fully loaded, one behind the other, passed infront of my driveway. If my snowmobile hadn't turned by sheer chance, I would have surely been killed. Unquestionably. I stood up, shutting the engine down, realizing how close to death I came. My parents, inside the house, unknowing of my near-certain demise, were laughing at my 'accident' through the front picture window, overlooking the driveway and highway. It's only after I told them what happened they were horrified.
That very day, I got rid of that perticular snowmobile, and never ride on one that has questionable controls since. Submitted on 04/20/2003
Submitted by:
Mike Smylie
Reference:
Personal event
Copyright © 2002 DarwinAwards.com
|
