Posted on Wednesday, February 23, 2005 - 10:54 pm:
I must run these vehicles too hard. It was about 7pm, dark outside, and I was board. I took a cruise in the Max and for some reason decided to just ride around in the field. We own a fairly large field and I was running at about 1/2 throttle which is running my modded Briggs pretty hard. It is very unusual that I ride like this in a field. After about ten minutes something shiny caught my eye on the left side. I thought it was just a bug or something that got a reflection of my headlights. I kept running hard and saw it again about a minute later. I then stopped and was almost sure it was a spark. I looked over the side at the muffler and it was very dark so I didn't see anything. A few seconds later a bright light came from the muffler area. Oh hell I thought, another fire! There was no running for a hose this time. I pegged the throttle and hit the lake full bore. That quickly solved the problem and I drove back to the shed. One look at the exhaust told me what happened. It was packed with used to be dry leaves and grass. An unusual chain of events almost made an unwanted camp fire for me. I never thought the exhaust heat would light a fire like that. I will keep a closer watch on the exhaust and everyone else should too! What would I do without the excitement of off road vehicles?