quad took 3 days of fab work and repairs to finish all the jobs that needed doing.
front shocks are unobtainable in the uk and silly postage cost from the us... so i ordered a set of 'close enough' shocks from autodoc. when the old ones where removed i found the compression damping working fine, but the valving for rebound was non existent, in effect changing them from a damper to a assisting spring, you could barely push them down and the spring back instantly. no wonder the quad felt way oversprung. the front end is way more compliant now.
the carb was overflowing the float bowl when idling, a quick adjustment to the float height on the new carb lead to removing and refitting it about 10 times before the needle and seat sealed properly and stopped flooding the engine.
adjusting the chain should have been easy but was all seized, leading to taking the entire rear axle apart and using a large hammer to drive it apart. once greased and reassembled it moves fine.
i also changed the gearcase and engine oils. neither have ever been changed in our ownership. the gearcase has always been rather clunky and resistant to change. just assumed it was worn. turns out putting 80w gear oil in instead of the specified 5w-30 engine oil into the gearcase will do that. its 5w-30 for the engine too, so that's convenient.
lastly we needed to install a front winch to raise and lower the bucket. this took ages as i had to modify the front luggage rack to raise it up to clear. i found a good location for the control box behind the headlight and ran the cables back to the battery. i then discovered the cheap chinese winch did not come with a isolator, and dad was most grumpy when i refused to wire it without one. the winch being a very small one just has 2 relays to reverse polarity for direction change. that being the case there is a non zero chance of the contacts welding themselves together under load, so imho it would be unsafe to wire it so there's no mechanical isolation. luckily i had a isolator knocking around from a old landrover winch install where i put a much higher rated isolator in for a 13000 lb winch, so that was a easy fix.
once all the modifications where done, all the brackets and frames came home with me for a spot of 10pm paint
all in all there was a lot of project creep, but it all works, and its already shoved the muck heap around a bit, which was the main reason for buying it.