As I said on the Project Foreman Front page I still cant believe its been 20 years since I walked though the doors of the old Honda One building on Topsail Road and picked up my brand new 1998 Honda Foreman 450s! It was exciting then and there's never been a dull moment since. This bike has been everywhere, put through thick & thin and rarely skipped a beat.

• 20th Anniversary Special Gallery- 20 years of awesome rides.

The bike has always been used to its full potential chewing through thick bog, climbing insane hills, hauling much larger loads than recommended and logging trail miles. I've never abused it and I always make necessary repairs, maintenance and then some. Therefore its been a truly reliable and capable toy, tool and workhorse over the years, even recently at Sooley's cabin hauling firewood.

At the time I purchased it new in 1998, the 450 Foreman was the biggest bike Honda made and right up there with offerings from other manufacturers. Although there are much larger and more powerful bikes on the market today such as Maffer's Can Am 800 beast that nearly triples my Foreman's horsepower, my trusty ATV has stood the test of time and still holds its own in all of the situations it faces alongside modern bikes.

Project Foreman has seen a lot of upgrades and changes over the years as spelled out in detail on the Front Page for this project and in the many story pages linked below. All of these keep me very happy with this purchase as I've been able to add features that have come out on newer bikes but weren't even dreamed of in 1998 when this bike was built.

In 1998 I performed a major 10-year anniversary rebuild of Project Foreman where I went through just about every system on the bike. That was after 9500 well earned kilometres. There have been repairs since then, but today at 20 years and with another 4500km on the clock I'm pleased to say the bike is running great with no major repairs planned, but possibly some cosmetic changes, so stay tuned!

After 20 years faithful service I have no plans to ever part with my beloved Foreman, I may pick up a newer bike at some point to take some pressure off my now classic ATV but it will see a lot more miles yet!

2018 Repairs & Adventures:

February 22, 2018 20th Annual Winter Cabin Trip. Once again mother nature did us dirty on the winter trip with no rideable snow for the sleds at the beginning of the trip. It hasn't been very cold either so riding on the pond is borderline at best. I spent the first day carefully measuring the ice and marking off a few bad spots with boughs drilled into the ice, especially for the boys on dirt bike so they knew where to stay clear of.

We finally got some snow a few days into the trip which actually made it awesome on the bikes, drifting and carving at speed on the glare ice below.

March 3, 2018 Torbay wet sloppy snow ride.

March 19, 2018 Fresh snow ATV rip & boil-up. Pretty significant ride today as I finally got back into having a boil-up on rides. I just picked up a new Kelly Kettle and got a chance to fire it up along with my MSR Superfly gas stove. Our crew for the most part just ride ride ride, it's fantastic to get back to what I grew up with going in the woods with Dad.

May 16, 2018 Torbay ATV ride and new Camping Hammock test. Finally got a chance to set up my new camping hammock, a hammock with a built in fly screen, and covered with a Hennessey Hex Rain Fly. Unit is super comfy & stable, cant wait to try it out overnight!

August 20, 2018 Another ATV Ride and boil-up with the Kelly Kettle. Fried up my marinated sliced moose, onion & mushroom concoction, and funny enough seen a moose on the way home!

September 21, 2018 Sooley Cabin work weekend. Busy weekend at the Sooley cabin near Whitbourne, re-decking part of the back patio, and hauling out a pile of firewood Maffer, Sooley and I cut on the new ATV path a couple years ago. It was a workout and a fairly long run but Project Foreman got its share done with ease.

After the September Cabin trip I gave the bike a quick look over and was surprised to find that the snowplow bracket I installed two winters ago was still on the bike! This certainly explained why I got hung up so bad towing out the last load of firewood, especially given the damage to the bracket!

I had planned to design and build a better bracket at some point so now I have good reason to do so sooner!

On my last Torbay ATV ride in August I noticed the oil cooler fan kicking on an off rapidly so I knew I would be tracking down an electrical gremlin soon. While hauling firewood at Sooley cabin the fan didn't kick in at all. Rather than throw parts at the problem I followed my service manual and began trouble shooting. Following the steps I removed the electrical connector from the fan control unit under the front fender, all tested OK except that I had an open circuit to the engine oil temp sensor. I took off the single wire connecter and found it split in two. An OHM's test of the sensor itself showed that it was OK so the broken connector was definitely the problem.

The sensor is in a very difficult place to reach with my aftermarket skid plates installed. The Allan head bolts are in terrible shape having been dragged over countless rocks so I will have to cut the heads off the bolts at some point to do a proper repair. For now I picked up a good ground at the OEM main chassis ground and fed it through a switch to the oil temp sensor wire. This circuit looks for a ground signal to activate the fan and will only operate with the key on. This will provide a great temporary repair until I can get the right electrical connector and cut off the skid plate bolts to install it.

Moose Hunting with the French's October 2018.

With the first few weeks of Moose hunting out of the way I finally had time to make a proper repair to the cooling fan sensor. First up was removing the right side floorboard to make accessing/viewing the sensor a little easier.

As figured, I had to cut the heads off 3 out of 4 skid plate bolts as they had been heavily damaged doing their job protecting the frame from trail obstacles. You need to drain the engine oil before removing the oil temp sensor, which worked out well as Project Foreman was due for an oil change anyway. With the skid plate dropped I could reach the oil temp sensor with a 17mm wrench. With the sensor removed another 1/2 cup of oil ran out of the engine.

I picked off the remaining broken piece of electrical connector and found a matching piece in my T&B stake on kit. I had to trim the red plastic completely off the T&B connector so it would fit inside the OEM rubber sleeve.

After crimping the connector I also soldered it to a new length of wire, then coated the connector in dielectric grease for maximum corrosion resistance. There was a tear in the skinny end of the OEM rubber sleeve so I added a piece of adhesive lined heat shrink for an excellent repair. I chose to leave my temporary switch in place and wired the sensor into the "off" side of the switch. This connects the sensor directly to the Fan Controller Module same as OEM, but leaving the switch in place gives me the ability to override and turn on the fan at anytime.

The stubs of the cut off Allan head bolts were surprisingly easy to remove from the skid plate mounting brackets so they were reinstalled using new M8 hex head bolts.

With repairs complete it was on to standard maintenance changing the front and rear differential oil. I always manage to find a little water in the rear diff, this time was no exception. Changing this fluid regularly ensures the bike runs well even after extreme use and/or extreme terrain.

Finally the oil was refilled with my choice Maxima semi-synthetic blend 10w40 which has treated me very well since Honda One stopped carrying Opti4. Its been an amazing 20 years with this bike, and it goes to show that with proper maintenance and making repairs when needed vs. procrastinating and causing more damage, a quality ATV can certainly stand the test of time.

November 2, 2018 Torbay evening ride. Did a quick evening ride today leaving from our house in Torbay. I was pleasantly surprised to see they have been doing some work on the ATV trail outside of the airport fence. Trees and brush are trimmed back, and trail levelled and water holes filled in.

Cheers, MIKE