VintageVmax.com

Here is the story, I have had two vmax 540's,both have had recoil problems.I think they have to many moving parts and was a bad design, three pawls,three pawl springs one driveplate and one driveplate return spring, thats eight moving parts,what I did is make it two moving parts, I can expand on this if anyone would like to know but more testing will need to be done.

we're listening .....

OK,lets do a sort of poll, how many of us have or have had problems with recoil's? this conversion is done with NO changes to the yamaha housing so if it doe's not work out with testing everything can go back to stock.

i had to swap out starters twice last season and my season ended early... if your idea works and you take some good pictures ill add it in the articles section and make it sticky

Over 10 years and I'm now on my 2nd recoil. Yes, they are known to be problematic just, make your rope is long enough and never pull the recoil to the end of the rope when starting.

well all the testing was done this winter and the recoil performed great,not once did it stick or bind or not return the rope without jiggling the handel,I am about to do another one and will take step by step pics and post them.

Since I've had mine, it has always slipped a bit before grabbing, I took it a part cleaned everything and saw nothing visually wrong, Still did it. I'm now in the habit of pulling lightly until it engages, then pulling hard, still working after a season.
I have never looked close to see if there the same, but the recoil on my SRV is original, its a "81

The recoil on the srv is not the same,it is the udated yamaha style with two parts that move,good recoil.

Odd, The SRV is an 81, the VM a 83. I also always wondered why the slower sleds even before the VM got reeds the VM which was the Hot Rod, didn't.. I've been keeping my eyes out for some junk cyls with reeds on them. I have enough extra VM jugs
Theres a big show and swap tomorrow that I'm going to in St Germain, want to see all the old race sleds in the Hall of Fame

True story on recoils, lastime we were up here, I'm in Bayfield right now, The recoil fell off the SRV, bolts must have worked loose and snapped off flush with the housing. I had nothing here to get them out. I looked around for a branch the right size, jambed it in between the recoil and the frame. Held it in place the whole trip, still in their now

sxr1000 wrote:well all the testing was done this winter and the recoil performed great,not once did it stick or bind or not return the rope without jiggling the handel,I am about to do another one and will take step by step pics and post them.

Cool, we can have Tyler make this into an Article ! Thanks !

sxr1000 are those parts from a Polaris rewind,or A cat?

The original vmax recoil used a steel rope sheave and was the same as early arctic cat spirit sheaves and was interchangable, knowing that and polaris and modern arctic cat use the same parts I figured it should fit,it did with just some slight modifications to the plastic sheave.