Using the Argo

I haven’t posted for a while as I've been at bit busy, mainly out in the forest. The Argo is running well and the time spent servicing it seems to have paid off.
We are trying to control the deer as we are not getting any tree regeneration in the forest, so we have been fixing the holes in the fence and adding new stakes where they have broken or rotted. We have also installed some stiles, otherwise people would just try and climb over the fence and no doubt damage it. The Argo has been great at getting materials out to the various locations.

One of the stiles is about half a mile from the nearest landrover track vehicle and I didn't fancy carrying the timbers, but with the Argo it easy.

One of the stiles under construction

I've also been cutting out some of the wind blown trees with a chainsaw and using the Argo to drag them out. There is more than enough for a lorry load so I might try and sell them, otherwise I'll just use them for firewood.

Initially I just tied a rope around the trunk and pulled out with the Argo but the ends dig in quite a bit and get covered in mud. So I made up a skidder from off-cuts of timber and put steel runners on the bottom. It's working quite well and the Argo make light work of it. So much so that I'm going to make up a bigger version to take 4 trees at a time

Towing timber with the skidder Two ends of a loop a rope go through a hoop in the end plate and then I used timber hitch knots around the log. The end loop just goes over the Argo towbar ball.
The rope is quite thin making it the weak link if anything goes wrong.

We've driven round the site quite a bit recently trying to find the best routes to various points in the forest. The land is difficult to traverse even in the Argo. It was high forest till about 1990, when clear felled so it has lots of tree stumps sticking up out of the ground which are now covered in heather or moss. On top of this, it's been forestry-ploughed such that there are deep parallel ditches at 2m spacing over much of the site. If you are in the heather you know there are lots of plough ditches but you can't see them without getting out and walking.

I've not been stuck yet but I've come quite close to it when one set of wheels fell into a plough ditch. Luckily I managed to reverse may way out

Argo on one of the old tracks in the forest.

The route we used to get up the hill

This is where we are going today.

Once we have got some routes sorted out it will get a lot easier as they will get flattened out with use. So hopefully over the next few months getting round will be a lot easier.

Keeping the rain out

We still don’t have our own trailer for the Argo which is why The Forester was keen to get it serviced and in good nick before taking it up to the forest about 15 miles away. He didn’t want to have to keep bringing it back home to fix things.

Fortunately our neighbour has an excellent trailer which he is happy to lend us, and it’s great to be able to use that until we find one of our own. The other issue is at the moment we don’t have any undercover storage for the vehicle up at the woodland so we needed to get some sort of cover.

After various ideas, we bought a “small car cover” for £20. This looked OK apart from the fact that the box says it isn’t waterproof, which rather defeats the object. However, this does seem to be an overly defensive statement as maybe you couldn’t carry water in it, but it does seem to provide plenty of protection. To be on the safe side, we’re putting a plastic tarpaulin underneath it.



Within 24 hours of taking the Argo and its cover up to the wood, we had some heavy snowfall followed by several days of rain. The cover is in fact a bit too large and so was liable to sag and pond. Two strategies to solve this: a couple of tucks in it using cable ties to make it fit better, plus a patent hoop construction - two bits of wood and two bits of plastic piping - provide a frame to sit in the back and raise the cover so water won’t collect in.


Plans are in place to build a shed for it but this is working for now.

Finishing off the servicing

Fixing the parking brake:

I managed to get a new bolt for the parking brake from Aird's, it was about £2 including postage. Fitting was straight forward and I got both sides of the handbrake caliper adjusted and it now seems to work fine. I did have a good look around for the missing nut and bolt underneath the engine and gearbox but I didn't find it and in the end only one bolt was missing. So this is all sorted and a feel a lot happier now that it can be parked on a hill and not have to worry about it running away

So to the oil change:

The oil drain plug is on the side of the engine (the big bolt just above the drive belt in first picture above) . Draining the oil from here looked like a horrible job as a lot of oil was bound to miss any collection vessel and go all over the floor of the Argo. So after some thought, I decided to buy a oil pump and suck the oil out of the dipstick tube. The unit I bought came with two tube sizes but neither were small enough, but I happen to have a smaller tube in stock and so used this with the others all joined up to get down to the size required. Getting the tube down the dip stick tube wasn't that easy as it seemed to get stuck some way from the bottom but I eventually managed by using the dipstick as a guide as I pushed the tube down. I think I might buy a length of solid tubing for the next oil change to get over this problem.

Anyway the oil sucker worked a treat, very quick and no mess. I only got about 1.5 litre of oil out and the manual says it needs 1.8 litre, so I wasn't sure I'd got it all at first. However the oil filter is mounted horizontally on the front of the engine and when I started to loosen this I soon realised where the rest of the oil was. The thread is so long that it takes quite a while to get the filter off and effectively all the oil in the filter runs down the engine. Fortunately I had plenty of rags underneath it which caught most of the oil. A very messy job but the oil was warm so it gave a strange warming feeling to my fingers. Definitely worth wearing latex gloves. I then fitted the new filter and added the new oil. Job done.



Oil filter at the front of the engine. Not the easiest of places to work. Kawasaki part number 49065-2071





The next job was to replace the fuel filter. This is a semi transparent unit and the filter element was a brown rusty colour. I removed the front seat and undid the jubilee clips. The fuel pipes were quite hard and it was very difficult to get them off the old filter. With a lot of gentle easing, a small screwdriver and twisting both ends eventually came free. Alas with all this messing around the jubilee clip on the tank end had vanished down the pipe into a crevice on top of the tank and out of sight. It seemed to take ages messing around to get it back up the tube for re-connection of the new filter. Next time I'll undo this clip, move it down the pipe a little and then tighten it up so does not vanish out of sight again.

So almost finished with the servicing, the last job was to have a look at the tyres and rims. Some didn't seem to be holding pressure for long so I took them off one by one and put soapy water on the tyre, rim and valve to find out where the problems were. It was quite obvious really, the rims were knocked about a lot and the bead seals were foaming up. These are 5 hole rims and not easy to find but I did give Aird's a phone and they had them in stock. They are about £40 each but they did offer to include fitting the tyre for this price. Some of the tyres don't have much tread left so I think I'll just live with this for the moment. When I get fed up with pumping them up I'll have to bite the bullet.

So all the servicing is now done and ready to go.

Well, having done the two rear chains and discovered that they were nice and tensioned up compared to the old ones, it soon became apparent that the rest of the chains were not in a good state and would need replacing.

So on our next walking trip to the hills, we went via Aird's at Beauly and got six more chains to complete the wheel set. Another 20ft of chain at £9.55 per foot plus VAT. There were a couple of things I learnt from doing the rear chains: first, it's much easier if you jack the whole Argo up so that the wheels and chains can be turned without having to push the vehicle up and down the garage. Secondly, the chains do have master links but were just buried under years of consolidated grease and muck.

There were yet more surprises when I took off the remaining chains including this 35-06 Remington casing in the muck below them. You can also just see one of the master links on the old chain.

Anyway having master links made things a lot easier and I soon had them removed. Cleaning up the black gunge on the sprockets and below the chains took a lot of time, a lot of rags and numerous pairs of latex gloves. Not a nice job but has to be done.




The left hand side chains went in really easily and getting the master links in was straight forward using the plumber's pliers to pull the two ends together. Even the front ones were OK despite there not being a lot of room to get your hands in.

On the right hand side I tried to fit the front chain with only the battery removed but this proved impossible as this chain seemed to be very short and tight to get the master link installed and the battery frame got in the way. So I then removed the frame and having ground the pliers a bit to give them better purchase on the chain ends I eventually got them installed. It was a struggle as they were very tight and I was glad when they were done. The other two were fine and straighforward. The manual, which I found on the web, says to replace the nylon tensioners if there are 1/4 inch groves in them. They were grooved, but nothing very bad and it did strike me that the grooves were all on the spring side so you could always take then off and turn them round if you were concerned.

Whilst the battery and its frame were out, I took the opportunity to investigate why the handbrake was not working. (Separate mechanical handbrakes were an optional extra and this Argo has one.)

Anyway it seems that only one of the two bolts which attach the caliper (pictured left) to the engine frame was present. The shorter one was missing for some reason and this was rendering the mechanism useless. I'll need to spend a bit of time looking in the gunge under the gearbox to see if I can find them. Both sides seem to be the same so perhaps they were removed for some reason which will only become evident when I refit them! I've removed the right side to clean it up and will source new nuts and bolts unless I find them in the bottom somewhere.

Argocats can damage your computer... Mrs H

We have now accumulated a number of downloaded manuals for the Argo and also for the Kawasaki engine and were going to post the links for these, as they have not been easy to find. Unfortunately, however, one of the websites had some malicious software which led to a message on the computer saying we had a hard disk error. This led to half a day trying to fix the laptop and we wouldn’t want to inflict that on anyone else. So at present, if you’re looking for operating and service manuals - they do exist but don’t always appear on the first page of Google searches. And make sure you have good antivirus/malware software before downloading anything.

How we acquired the Argocat - Mrs H

After much debate and web browsing, the Forester decided that an Argocat was the ideal vehicle for use in the woodland which we bought last year. He really fancied a tractor and I’d always wanted a little grey Fergie but the nature of the ground - pretty rough and steep in parts - meant an Argo seemed the best choice.

He then spent long hours tracking Ebay auctions and other sale sites, getting an idea of prices and different models. Living in Highland Scotland meant that the available options were limited. So when he spotted that there were two Argos for sale at Dingwall Auction Mart on 10 March, it was definitely worth a visit. We went up on the Friday to have a look round and were greeted with a vast array of tools, implements, machinery and fascinating, miscellaneous stuff. There were in fact three Argos: one looking very rusty and neglected, one which had the advantage of a trailer but had a 6 inch gash in the front of its hull, and the third which seemed OK - not pristine but definitely worth returning for and we registered with the office before leaving.

We used to be regulars at furniture auctions in the Central Belt - great fun and a very cheap day out if you manage to resist buying. But this was our first experience of a large scale open air event and so we planned to arrive early on the Saturday to get the measure of it before actually having to bid. The car park was already full when we arrived but we were directed to park in a field. The place was swarming with folk: it had a real sense of occasion and it was great for eavesdropping on varied conversations of farming, estate work and country life in general. At one stage there were three different auctions taking place in different areas of the yard. We followed the implement sale and resisted bidding on some Argo tracks which went for an amazing £10. The Forester complemented the buyer on his bargain - the guy was very pleased.

In the byres, small tools and equipment were being sold with prices often starting at £1. By contrast when the machinery sale started at 12 noon, there were cattle floats going for over £12K and many other items at similar prices. The auctioneer worked his way along the line of tractors, diggers, vans and cars, accompanied by one man carrying a labelled board with keys hanging on it and another who started each vehicle in turn before the bidding commenced. The Argos were packed in to a tight space against the shed together with a Scot-track Glencoe, a tracked dumper truck and several mules, all of which were attracting a lot of interest. We had agreed on two top prices: one including VAT and one without.. Before each lot, the auctioneer announced whether there was VAT payable on it - this presumably depended on whether the seller was VAT registered so couldn’t be predicted in advance.

The Forester positioned himself by the Argo early as we wanted a good 10 minutes before the auctioneer and his entourage reached that section. The auctioneer asked for £1500, £1000, £500 and someone started the bidding at that point. The Forester put in an answering bid with a head nod and kept going to £1500. At that point another bidder joined in but not long after, we’d got it and well below our top price.

It took a while to sink in - we weren’t really expecting to get one at the first attempt - but we were really pleased. The only snag was it didn’t have a trailer, and neither did we, but we knew several men who did it. We set off home to make a few phone calls.

Replacing Argocat Conquest chains

I've just acquired a 1998 Argocat Conquest and I decided the best thing to do before using it was to give it a good service and fix any serious problems. One thing I noticed was that the chains were stretched and very slack. The tensioners were all fine but just unable to cope, with the result that the chains were cutting into the cross members. This was only going to get worse.


This is how I replaced the two rear chains this weekend.


I went to Aird Motors in Beauly and got them to cut two new chains to length. They just needed to know the Argo's serial number and their computer told them how many links were in the chain. They cost about £45 each inc vat. The guy couldn't be more helpful.







My old duplex chains (DID 50) had no master link and so I had to grind down the heads of one of the links with my angle grinder. I took off the chain tensioner spring and put a block of wood under the chain to lift it up as much as possible and then used the grinder. Sparks, oil and a petrol tank in the Argo called for a few precautions, so I covered the petrol tank with an old wool carpet, got a fire extinguisher and ground the rivets so sparks went to the rear of the Argo. All went well and I then prised the link plate off with a screw driver.

The next job was the clean up all the old grease and oil that was below the chain and around the sprockets. I softened this up with degreaser, scraped as much off as possible with a small paint scraper and then set to with a old tooth brush and more degreaser and plenty of rags. I found several lost items buried in the old grease including a couple of bullet casings and some clips. I'm not sure where the clips are from yet. Interestingly the old grease had done a good job in rust prevention as paintwork was virtually intact.




Fitting the new chain was a bit of a struggle as its much shorter and the ends don't want to meet easily. In order to bring them as close as possible I jacked up the rear of the Argo so that the rear wheel and sprocket moved freely. It was then possible to tension the lower part of the chain by turning the rear wheel and then jam a block of wood under it which stopped it revolving. I used plumber's pliers, opened as wide as possible, to pull the two ends together and slotted in the master link and clip.

Having done one, the other side was a lot easier. I greased up the inner bearings, all 8 of them, and whilst I was at it, I took off all the wheels and greased the the two nipples on each wheel.

I now think all the chains need replacing so I'm going to order more chains and carry on with the engine service.

Welcome to the Argocat Blog - Mrs H

There is surprising little about Argocats on the web - no forum, no users' group, not much on Youtube - and the purpose of this blog is to begin to rectify this.

There will be two aspects: technical input from Mr H, The Forester, as he learns how the thing works (and maybe sometimes doesn't) and the background elements from Mrs H who hopes not to become an Argocat widow. A possible indication of the shape of things to come is The Forester's comment, made a couple of minutes ago as he emerged from the garage: "I think all the chains need replacing..."