Double bored or double board? (March 19, 2014)

The saga of a Yamaha 292 – double bored

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Just as I sat down at this word processor, a trio of snowmobilers zoomed by. They were going at Mach I down the trail that is about twenty metres off Manse Hill Road and parallel to it as it goes by our estate. Were they ever having fun!

            It is about time they had some snow to play on.

            Many people would be surprised to learn that I was once a snowmobile owner. Yup, back in the late 1970s I owned a Yamaha 292 that I had bought from a chap in Four Falls. Apparently its pistons were larger than when it came from the factory. They said it had been 'double bored'. Although I didn't have any idea what double-bored is or was, I guessed it had something to do with the feeling a person gets on a long, long winter's day, the feeling that makes him go out and buy a secondhand snowmobile even though he's about as mechanically inclined as a gerbil.

            My nephews, however, were - and are - mechanically inclined. The instant I brought home the Yamaha on my halfton, these teenagers were on it like a Persian rug - no insult to any Iranians who might be reading this. "We'll fix it up, Uncle Bob!"

            And so they did. When I brought it home and they started it, the Yamaha was running, but without much pizzazz. They took it apart right out in the yard behind my cabin. Parts were spread all over the place. "Are you SURE you know how to put that thing back together?" I asked.

While they were doing this, I was sipping on a Moosehead and the more I drank, the more confident I felt that my dear nephews - what were their names? Shawn and Harry? - could make it the finest snow machine in Tilley and suburbs including west Rowena. "Youse is good boys," I kept saying, until John threw a three-quarter inch open-end wrench past my ear and followed it with a half-inch socket.

NOTE: I quit drinking alcohol soon after this, mainly because buying parts for the Yamaha soon made me a pauper. Nothing stronger than Pop these days. (Pop is a vodka man.)

Back to the story, I finally shut up and let them work and, sure enough, in an hour or so they had it all back together and purring like a kitten when it wasn't roaring like a lion. John tried it first in the field behind my cabin. He was only gone twenty minutes. I could hear the Yamaha singing out in the woods and when it emerged it and John zoomed past the cabin, turned around and came back, at which point Terry decided he should try it out - after filling it with gas from my can. He was only gone fifteen minutes. "Working great!" he said to John.

"Let me take it for a spin!" I said, sort of begging, like. It was my snowmobile after all.

"Well, I don't know, Uncle Bob," said John. "I don't know if the inverter valve is working just right. We should test it some more, don't you think so, Terry?" Terry agreed. So for the next two hours they tested the inverter valve, the collation arm, the needle valve, the big belt hinges, the generator housing, and who knows what all. Finally I went into my cabin and lay down. I could hear the Yamaha now and then, blasting its way through the fields and woods.

            I awoke the next morning to the sound of voices outside. It was my dear nephews. I went out where they were discussing my snowmobile. “We’ll have to take it out for a good run this morning, Uncle Bob,” said Terry. “Up to Riley Brook. It’s only forty miles or so and then we'll know how those carburetor points are working." So off they went with one dear nephew driving my snowmobile and the other driving my brother Lawrence's. They were back in time for supper.

            Let's go to the bottom line, as they say. I had that Yamaha a total of three months and got to drive it about half an hour while my nephews, always fixing something, drove it a total of about ninety-six hours, always on my gasoline.

Its final journey ended about March 15, the Ides of March, which is when Caesar got knifed. I was actually driving it. The Yamaha, not the knife. As I went past the Lerwick Baptist Church, the Yamaha  quit with what my grandfather would have called 'an atomic kablooah'. Pieces flew everywhere, even into the graveyard, which shows that there is poetry in the world.

The reason I’m writing this column is to tell my nephews that I knew all the time what they were doing. They didn’t fool their old Uncle Bob. I might not be mechanically inclined, but I recognize a con job from a distance. Carburetor points indeed.

                             -end-