Retrofitting a Yamaha for Recoil start

[McGurk]

Yes, I know; Sounds like a pain. I have a late 90's Yamaha Wolverine 350 that does NOT have recoil start. I haven't been stranded yet, but am not looking to start anytime soon. The 350 engine is used quite extensively in this time period, but it is not simply popping a dummy cover and bolting on on. From what I can see I would need a crank case cover that accepts one, and then a pulley and recoil assembly. The recoil and pulley are easy to find, but the crank case cover is not.

Anyone have any thoughts/opinions/experience with this? Thanks in advance!

[snowfighter]

I installed a recoil on a 1993 Yamaha Big Bear some years back and as I remember it was removing cover and bolt on recoil wasn't much to it

[McGurk]

Thanks for your input; my Dad actually has a big bear around that some age, and he also has a recoil installed from factory. I have looked at the schematics of Big Bears, Moto-4s, Kodiaks, Warriors, and Wolverines trying to figure out what will swap. From what I can tell there are some cases that are built accept them, and some that are not. I wish the latter of the 2 was the case for me. The recoil takes only 4 bolts, but there is nothing that comes off remotely close to that easily on mine. The case cover on that side has around 10 bolts (and a bunch of oil and gears!)

If that is what I have to do I guess that is what I have to do. I was hoping to hear from someone who did a similarly difficult retrofit to their machine and see what the ins and outs were to the job.