Yamaha Quiet Tech Spark Arrestor
 

Did some wrenching on the ride this morning, and since I had to pull the skid plate to drain the oil, I decided to remove the problem causing spark arrestor while I had easy access. Below are a couple pictures. It came off very easy with an Allen wrench. After 141 hours on the cart it was clearly starting to clog up and would have definitely started to caused some performance problems in the not to distant future. After removing it, I noticed a little bit more responsiveness and a negligible difference in cart noise. The cart might have been slightly louder when accelerating at low speeds, but there was absolutely no sound difference once the cart reached cruising speed.

I would highly recommend fellow Quiet Tech owners remove these devices from their carts before performance issues rear their ugly heads.

its just a useless part that the cart does not need around here.

Yup, kind of like a person’s appendix or wisdom teeth. No real functional use, but a ticking time bomb of trouble.

Does this help with the gas smell when in the garage and exhaust smell?

I'm in total agreement with you...the arrestor must go to prevent future poor performance. I started a post on 12/17/23 with several endorsements of same. One note...if you can't reach it with the allen wrench or needle nose vice grips to remove, you can always drill out the wire mesh using a 1/4" drill bit. I had to do this on my '20 QT. Can't detect any noise difference on either of my '19 or '20 QT's.

I used the largest (diameter) Phillips screw driver to put a hole in the screening, then wiggled it around to enlarge it, that was 2 years ago, easy to do and I did not need to drag the electric drill under the cart.

Get yourself an oil extractor and save your back. No need to crawl under these things.

I alternate oil changes between pumping with an extractor and draining from the plug in the oil pan. Since the cart has no oil filter, it’s good to drain the oil to remove any particles that the extractor leaves behind. When I drain the oil, I also flush the oil pan out with a quart of cheap dinosaur oil to fully clean out the oil pan. I then treat the cart to a fresh quart of Amsoil small engine oil. The Villages golf cart service department always takes the easy and less optimal way out and pumps the oil.

Well, as long as you don't try to drive your cart in a National Forest where spark arrestors are required. :-)

How close is it to the rear of the tailpipe?

I’ll try to avoid all those National Forests inside the bubble. If all the cart drivers that throw out cigarette butts hasn’t started a fire yet, I wouldn’t worry about removing a spark arrestor.

See the photos in post #1, it slips right over the end of the tailpipe.

No, its arrestor prevents sparks from back fire. Same old smell coming out just restricted more. I hope you’re not talking about raw gas smell? If so probably need to look for leak or seep IMO. Is it carburetor cart? Is so that would explain the smell?

Good point.

When it is warm outside and I park in the garage there will be a strong smell of raw gas. Taken it to the Villages cart several times for this and exhaust smell. The exhaust smell is not all the time. Very frustrating. They say no problem. I never see any gas leaks. It is 2020 Yamaha.