Around 3pm on Saturday I got a second, now panicked phone call from Dad. He texted me the above picture earlier that day around noon and said he sunk the Commander in a pond while trouting. He said not to worry one of his buddies was on his way in the country to help.

In those three hours Dad and Lloyd managed to get the machine towed out of the pond and up on level ground. The engine was fine but the belt drive was full of water, so they planned to tow it back to Bay Roberts using Lloyds ATV. The tight, twisty, very steep path from the pond to the main trail proved too much for just one ATV to haul this 1600LB beast up over, hence my 2nd phone call.

I loaded up Project Foreman along with an assortment of tools and hit the highway west to Bay Roberts. There I met Lloyd who led the way into the downed machine.

Even with two Quads available to tow, from my experience I knew the easiest and best way to get the Commander home was under its own power.

March 2010:

September 2012:

August 2015:

Having been through this a few times before I brought a thorough selection of tools with me for the recovery. This would have been an easy job except for the OEM Can Am accessory aluminum skid plate. This dealer installed accessory had no provision for accessing the belt drive drain plug and had to be dropped in order to get at it. Other than that, draining the belt drive went smoothly, we next checked the engine oil finding it fine and the machine fired right up.

We got all the panels back on, started the machine and held it in Neutral at a fast idle for awhile which dried out the belt.

The machine drove out of the country perfectly all the way back to Dad & Iris's place in Bay Roberts.

We emptied out all the storage compartments and set out his contents to air dry, all in all not a bad deal considering the circumstances. Although the engine, transmission and diff fluids were all OK, dad had the machine fully serviced as it was close anyway. It was an interesting day, quite an adventure and I'm sure a lesson learned!

Cheers, MIKE

Copyright © 2011 Michael Smith