Reviving an Old Kitty Cat…

If you have been following my blog since I started it back in 2006, you might remember THIS POST.  Since that post, not much has happened with the old Kitty Cat.  I have been faithfully storing it in our garage waiting for my kids to get old enough so they can ride it and enjoy it as I did. 

A couple years ago, I did some research on where to get parts and how to make a few improvements, but didn’t really do much else.  Now that Maeve is getting old enough to ride it, I wanted to get it “snow-worthy” again.  Dad and I spent a couple hours one afternoon and got it running.  We figured if it didn’t run, it wasn’t going to be worth doing anything else to it!  It had some issues, but fired up after a few pulls and ran good.  Now onto the other things that needed attention!

One of the main design flaws with the Arctic Cat Kitty Cat is that it sits so low to the ground, so if you have more than about three inches of snow, it gets stuck.  This is something that caused enough of a demand to change, a few guys started putting together “kits” to fix this problem.  The kits are basically a two to three inch “lift kit” that drops the rear suspension down away from the frame and then raises the front skis up.  I did a little research on the kits and found a guy who lives in Minnesota that produces one of the best ones.  All the parts are professionally machined and laser cut.  The kit cost $100 total and was competitively priced with the other kits available.

Along with installing the “lift kit” the follow is a list of the other improvements/repairs we had to make:

- Clean/Degrease entire sled

- Install new track

- Install new rear reflector

- Install new side hood reflectors

- Repair cracked hood fin

- Straighten front bumper

- Repair small tear in seat (Thanks Mom!)

- Bypass broken ignition switch

- Fabricate new chain case cover bracket (Thanks Dad!)

- Clean carburetor

- Restore fuel shut-off valve

- Install and reroute new fuel line

I don’t have ton of photos of each one of these procedures, but I do have a few of the track and lift kit installation.  The before (left) and after (right) are shown below.  You can see what a huge improvement in ground clearance the Kitty Cat has now!

 

The kit itself went together great and everything fit perfectly!  Replacing the front ski spindles not only raised the front end, it also eliminated the slop in the steering system!  After everything was together, I installed the grass wheels on the front skis!

 

 

 

Now that everything was together and working great, we had to do a test ride!  The kids really didn’t know what to think of it at first, but after a little bit of coaxing, they couldn’t get enough of it!  Maeve isn’t too sure of working the throttle yet, so Dad and I got some exercise running along side of it, but I’m guessing once she is in snow, it will be a different story!

 

 

The kids had a blast on the test ride.  It made getting the 40 year old Kitty Cat going again totally worth it!  I can’t wait for them to ride it this winter!  It is a really neat feeling knowing that this has been in our family for so long and it is STILL going!