Recoil spring did a king cobra last night when changing out the recoil rope. How do you recoil these things and get them to stay in place. I tried wraping by hand and w/ two nails in work bench...two hours later no luck
Alright, I'll go step by step with the way I did it. Hopefully I don't come off like you know nothing that's not the idea, I'm just gonna try and be thorough. The inside of the recoil cover should have a slot for the outer hook on the recoil spring to hook into. You gotta make sure you put it in the right way though. The recoil spring should want the tighten the way you pull out on the cord to start the sled. Visualize the sheave on top pulling the string out. Place the sheave on top, there is a slot in it aswell for the inner hook on the recoil spring. You have to make sure that the inner hook is positioned to that when you place the sheave on top and turn it in the direction of pulling the rope out it will want to catch in the slot and start to tighten (this can be easier said than done). Now just spin the sheave in the direction that the rope would put out until it tightens to the point you can't tighten it by hand anymore. I'm going to assume the rope is connected to the sheave. There should be a groove in the sheave to put the rope in while spinning the sheave so that it has clearance from the case. Once the sheave is pre-loaded, put the rope through the hole in the recoil cover and attach the pull handle. It should want to recoil back in now, and you should be set.
Hope this helps,
Daver
Here's a exploded view of my recoil off my '76 el tigre. I'm 99.9% sure the newer cats have the same cover and spring, but the sheave and prawls are different. The sheave should connect to the spring the same way though.
i had to do it on my jag this year about three times accidental what i found out is if you get the spring in your hand and start pulling the spring as much as you can then you stop hold the spring and wrap the spring around the recoiled spring and you keep going untill its small enough to fit in the cover its hard to explain but its about as easy as i think i can say it
i know this spring is a PITA but i was trying to help a friend do his on his polaris and we had three people taking turns on it and couldnt get it to get small enough and the polaris's cover is weird too so it really sucked
Recoil is back on and working great. Thanks for the help! I ended up pounding two nails into the work bench about an inch apart. Then placed the center hook of the recoil spring around one of the nails with the other nail placed inside of the first inner circle of the coil. Wrapped it up tight then took a needle nose vise grips clamping the inside of the coil to the outside. Then pulled the nails and inserted the recoil spring. Then took a small board and applied downward pressure to the recoil spring and slowly released the vise grip. I did have to cut off the outside hook in the recoil spring and bend in new kink d/t the kink kept bending out upon insertion.