Miles Turner

What I thought every time a sled came into my shop on a trailer 👆🏼

For 19 years I was a service tech at a powersports dealer in northern Wisconsin. I want to tell you what I thought every time a Ski-Doo 850 came in on a trailer on a Friday afternoon. I'm 63 now, retired, living outside Park Falls. I started turning wrenches on sleds when they still had points and pull cords. By the end I was the guy they gave the hard ones to. Every winter, the same scene played out at the service counter. A fella around my age would come in, usually with his cap in his hands. His sled was on a trailer out front. He'd be almost embarrassed. "It's missing on one side," he'd say. "I think it's just a plug. I tried to do it myself." Then he'd say the same thing almost all of them said. "I used to do all my own work." He wasn't wrong about the plug. On those 850s, it usually was one. And he wasn't wrong that he used to do his own work. What changed was the sled, not him. Here's what I never said out loud at that counter, because it wasn't my place. The plugs on that engine are packed in about as tight as anything I ever worked on. High on the engine's face, tucked beneath the intake, steering rods right in front. Once the bodywork and belt cover are off, you can see them fine. Getting a tool to turn on them is another thing. In the shop, we had lifts and clutch tools. We had a flex-head ratchet in every size, and the time on the ticket to pull whatever had to come out. Some guys pulled the jackshaft. I usually pulled the secondary clutch. With a lift and a clutch tool, it's not a bad hour. On a man's garage floor, with ordinary tools and a cold concrete slab under his back, it's a different job entirely. So when that fella stood at my counter apologizing, I always wanted to tell him: it isn't you. You didn't lose anything. The engine just got packed tighter than your tools. I never did say it. I wrote up the ticket, and we did the job. Then I retired, and I learned how that counter looks from the customer's side. I ride a 2019 with the same 850. No lift in my garage. No clutch tools, because they belonged to the shop. And the first winter after I retired, it started missing on one side. I stripped the bodywork, got a plug socket seated, and every swing of the ratchet ended in something after one click. 40 of these a winter I used to do. Flat on that concrete, I couldn't get one out. Hauling it back to my old shop on a trailer wasn't something I could do. I know that's pride. I also know exactly how that walk to the counter feels now. About a week later, the kid who took over my bay texted me a picture. His name's Brandon. I trained him when he was 19. It showed a blue bar, flat, lying across a Ski-Doo engine. One end was down where the plugs live, with a socket on it. The other end sat up by the clutch with a ratchet on it. "We do the 850 plugs with this now," he wrote. "No clutch pull. Chain inside. Thought of you." I called him. He told me it was called WildBear, and to get it from them directly. A customer had brought in a cheap copy from some website, he said, and the chain inside it slipped the minute Brandon leaned on it. That evening I went and bought one. https://wildbeartools.com/products/extension-wrench When the case came, I lifted the bar out and gave the drive a shove with my thumb. Not flex. Not wobble. A chain. I've handled a lot of tools in my life. I sat on my garage stool holding it for a good while. Bodywork off once more, clutch untouched. With the plug socket snapped onto the bar, I slid it in under the intake and felt it settle on the first plug. Out by the clutch, the ratchet swung free. One pull. It turned. Both plugs, maybe 15 minutes, lying on the same concrete that beat me the week before. I think about all those men at my counter, holding their caps and apologizing. Half of them could have done that job themselves in their own garage. They just didn't own a tool that could work in there. Now when I'm at the gas station in town and somebody's talking about their sled missing, I tell them what I never said at the counter. It isn't you. It's the engine. And then I tell them about the bar. https://wildbeartools.com/products/extension-wrench 30 percent off. Order direct.