| Author | Message | ||
     Strokizator |
I need some advice. Just moved to the U.P. and sledding is big here. I'm looking for new because I don't have time for another project. Plus, the lack of snow has dealers motivated to move inventory. So what's a good sled for the trails? I don't need to go like a bat out of hell, just something to enjoy myself on. 2-stroke or 4-stroke? The local dealer carries Yamaha & Polaris and I've had Can-Am ATV's that were well built. Budget is not a problem but I don't need "the brass coffin". | ||
| No_rice |
The yamaha 4 stroke in the arctic cat procross chassis(sold as yamaha's and arctic cats both) gets you alot of goodness. What seems to be a pretty reliable, low maintenance motor. Mated with what seems to be one of the best chassis on the market currently. I'd definitely look into those since that's one of your local dealers. If your getting a 4 stroke motor, spring for the turbo version. No reason not to, and you will be much happier. I do not own a 4 stroke. I really was trying to eliminate weight on my new sled. It was one of my main reasons for am upgrade. It's also hard for me to give up the 2 strokes. That sounds...! And the 2 stroke smell. | ||
| M2statz |
Currently you cannot buy a bad sled...my personal preference is a SkiDoo Blizard, I have always had good luck with SkiDoo's like I have with Buells and Jeeps. I agree with Tim about the 2 stoke...Sit on them and if you can test ride them... | ||
| No_rice |
well, i got all my goodies on! got the new y-pipe, pipe, reeds, clutches and tuner installed, as well as the LED lightbar. i dont like power commanders because of all the problems we have had with them at work on motorcycles(they used to be great, but have had a tone of problems the last 6-7 years) but... i needed one for the sled after the changes. so i bit the bullet and ordered one. of course it starts throwing codes right away and is already acting up. apparently power commander is well aware of the problem but doesnt have a fix. and since mine hasnt stopped running yet they wont send me a new one. not impressed... anyway, light seems to be staying put so far. only about 50 miles on the sled since reassembly. all ditch banging and field miles. no idea how well it will work at night yet since i havent ridden to late at night yet.    went to dads cabin in wisconsin for christmas. trails were basically closed. we did get snow while there though. looked pretty! got a couple of his sleds out just to run down our trail and clear some limbs...        played around on dads new(to him) 2012 800 rzr  mostly been doing alot of this though...  except for some test runs...  it sure was trying hard to stand on its tail though, and my suspension is set up to fight ski lift VERY hard...   good news, is that i head out friday night for an attempt at the first snowmobile trip of the year!!!!! | ||
| Biffdotorg |
I still like the light idea, but I know I would trash it in one drift bashing session. This clip I was showing the neighbor boy how to rip some drifts. We started real small and then kept moving up larger until we stuffed his sled. And these drifts were hard enough they would have taken that light out on the first hit. We also got some trail riding in with some of the new riders in the group. We have two 12 year olds with new permits and sleds. So we showed them the woods on their own sleds. | ||
| No_rice |
Spent a week ago, saturday-wednesday up in wisconsin riding. The trails were pretty good! could obviously use more base yet, but not bad except for rocks every so often. There was also basically NO traffic. had many fresh trails all to ourselves. i dont think ive ever been first on a stretch of fresh groomed for so many miles ever(i usually lead)! They are still fighting some thin ice as shown by the amount of groomers they kept sinking. This guy dropped his in the marsh right in front of me...    needless to say we weren't going to get to go that way... but we did get some good riding in!        Ended up shucking the motors on 2 of the Polaris though... My Dads coworker came along with his 700. Rode 3 days with no problems... then we stopped along the trail for a few minutes, and when he fired it back up it ran for a few seconds then BANG. stopped cold. the clutch side power valve broke and got sucked into the cylinder. stopping the piston in its tracks... finally got everyone and everything back to the house about 2:30am.. next day we took off again and rode most of the day(Dads coworker borrowed one of the extra sleds dad has up there)... only to stop again for a quick break and direction discussion. fire up the sleds again and... you guessed it, the polaris of Dads that his coworker was riding went BANG and stopped... exactly the same as the day before. broken power valve, same side same scenario... the estimate from the shop was $1200 to fix dads sled... cracked the cylinder and obviously trashed the piston and valve. they offered him a couple hundred for the sled for parts... i think its coming home instead and we will see what we can round up for it. in the mean time he just bought a 15 mxz 600. All that being said, 3 more days then Jenn and I head back up just the 2 of us to spend the weekend playing! Can't wait! It will be her first ride of the year. | ||
| Biffdotorg |
Very nice photos! Always good to see some good ones! I am sitting at real close to 500 miles on the season so far. Last weekend we found our first groomed trails of the season in this part of MN. Although it was near -20, we got in 85 miles on Saturday. Last night we got on some of our first groomed trails out of the house. All the local clubs are now grooming. The ditches were flat and fast! We put on 48 miles running to a nearby town for a bump. Pulling 65-70 in the groomed ditches was a hoot! One forgets how much fun that is. We have one more week before rolling to Michigan. As usual, we hope for 450 miles in three days. Since we are riding early week, we may get nice conditions! Pray for snow!! | ||
| No_rice |
we are loaded up and ready to go in just a couple hours! looking forward to a weekend just the 2 of us out exploring.  glad to hear your getting some good riding going this year! maybe we need to team up and head out east to really find some snow in the next couple days... lol! i had my clutches apart again to put some more preload on the secondary spring. it was a 2 person job and it was still a strain. looking forward to seeing how it changes the response though. i simply didnt have it set up the way it should have been before. the rollers wouldnt stay agains the ramp on the helix when you stopped. so give it throttle and BANG when it engaged. that should be fixed as well as it should shift out better/ | ||
| Reepicheep |
The little saturn that could! Those are greet little cars... best bang for the buck I ever had. | ||
| Macbuell |
Three things I miss about moving to the south ... snowmobiles, downhill skiing and pond hockey. | ||
| Biffdotorg |
Rice, I see some good things on the John Dee forecast. Lost of lake effect snow in the forecast. We should also see some across the region. I hope it holds true and these temps drop. 30-40 degrees is just too warm!!  | ||
| No_rice |
The little saturn that could! Those are greet little cars... best bang for the buck I ever had. im pretty fond of my saturns. they do alot more then they should. All while getting great mpg. normal unloaded driving ours all average mid 30's to low 40's. and this one drags trailers alot. although it pulled this trailer home empty from 3 hours away when i bought the trailer, it only ran it around town loaded with sleds. i actually got the Duramax out to make the 6 hour trip last weekend. no reason to destroy the car, this is just a little to much load for it to run 70+ with all day in the wind! Three things I miss about moving to the south ... snowmobiles, downhill skiing and pond hockey. never really had much to do with hockey, but obviously love sledding, and heading to the mountains of colorado to go skiing! not sure i'll get to this year, but had a blast last april at Keystone! Rice, I see some good things on the John Dee forecast. Lost of lake effect snow in the forecast. We should also see some across the region. I hope it holds true and these temps drop. 30-40 degrees is just too warm!! yes those temps are to warm! i hope he's right, but John Dee has been missing the mark bad this year! i actually just heard some guy in the bar up in wisconsin this weekend he'd like to take a trip up to go slap him for his forecasts lately lol. Jenn and I got a little over a couple hundred miles on Sat/Sun. Had a good trip! As usual im ready to go back in a few weeks! but if they dont get much snow, that plan may change. the trails were getting pretty beat by sunday night. now that i got Jenn to help hold my secondary clutch still while i twisted a little more preload into the spring, it works a TON better. shifts out nice! I'm glad to get her help when i ask her for some, and she does just fine... but this was a little bit of an adventure... me trying to wind a very heavy spring even tighter by hand, and push it down into place then hold it there(my feet hooked in the door frame to keep me from being moved by the spring while i basically lay on it to shove it down!) while she tries to line up and start 4 pretty small screws to hold on the adjustment cap... she got flustered, but we got it done! | ||
| Biffdotorg |
We ended up putting on over 600 miles in the Ironwood region and Houghton region from Saturday to Tuesday. Good times had by all and the snow was amazing. Just on warm for sure. When we pulled out on Wednesday, there was over a food of new snow on the ground. Now to find snow tomorrow back here in North-Central MN. | ||
| No_rice |
i tried to get some friends to go up with me on monday night so we were up there for the fresh snowstorm. bunch of lame guys anymore! couldnt get anyone to go. even with a free sled to use, free place to stay and free ride to get there... my main old snowmobile buddy said if he was slow at work and would love to go. then an hour or so later he said if he was not around to move snow at home after the storm he would be in the dog house... he has a one car driveway and no real sidewalk... i said if i was gone, Jenn and Lucas would go out, move the snow at our place and the neighbor ladies, then go to work/school... i told him to put his big boy pants on and come play... didnt work lol! Jenn and I leave again thursday to head north for some riding for a few days. cant wait! wish i could have caught the fresh 8-11" they got up there earlier this week. | ||
| Biffdotorg |
I manage a facebook snowmobile group of over 100 members. Last weekend I was asked to guide a group of 7 North of Park Rapids. We had a good ride, and found some good snow. Thin in spots that were exposed, but pretty good overall. That area got some new snow this week, and more is expected tonight. I am forced to take Monday off for the presidents day holiday. Bummer, I get to take my daughter out riding on fresh snow!! here is a clip from last weekend. | ||
| No_rice |
looks like you had a good time! i really should bring along my go-pro sometime... but i get stopped at the editing part once i go to do anything with it. got a few trips in. one was just Jenn and I. had a good time of course! finally got to try out the new trailer. worked great for the 6 hour trip.  i dont drink much, but stopped at a good restaurant on the way and decided to have a martini. hard to go wrong...!  got in some great riding! we can always cover more ground when its just the 2 of us! less stops and more riding!    and a good bloody mary once in awhile isnt that bad...!     my diesel doesnt come out of hibernation much. special occasions, or to haul something the car isnt going to do... 08 with 70,000 on it. had it 6 years almost now and i've barely put 10,000 miles on it... we dont normally have much food in it either(especially the kids!) but there is a creamery on the path back home that has really good ice cream and cheese so we made a stop... somehow my short fiance put her arm up high enough for something, to get chocolate ice cream on the ceiling of my truck... i mostly kept my mouth shut, but i think i shaved a couple years off her life with the look i had on my face... lol   anyway... just got back from the couples trip about 3 am monday morning. more good riding! Jenn and I ended up riding by ourselves sunday after my dads M7 was having a problem staying cool so they turned and headed back to the house.  the front outside idler wheel on the 900 dropped off the edge of the track because of a bearing going bad. tipped it up and was just going to unbolt that wheel for the last day. decided to take another look at the hyfax since i knew it was getting low and it had just started to show through... luckily i had brought a set along to leave up there incase... so had to swap those out also.    the whole group   and a shot from Sunday on the endless Chippewa flowage  last weekend we decided to squeeze in another trip this weekend, but that may very well get called of do to cruddy weather... i mean its supposed to get into the 40's in wisconsin this weekend, and 50's here at home. what the hell? knock that shit off! | ||
| Biffdotorg |
Saturday was a cold day up North. -22 at our favorite resort. It was -15 for us as we headed in that direction. Through the day, we had a 30 degree jump up to +15. Got in some amazing miles under a bluebird sky! I took Monday off as well to take advantage of the holiday. We awoke to a few inches of fresh snow, which is always welcome. We hope this warm weather doesn't kill it for us before the weekend. Bump this bad boy up to 1080p! | ||
| Biffdotorg |
Favorite screen grab from Saturday riding back to the trailer while the sun started to dip behind the trees!  | ||
| Loose1 |
The weather sucks here in MN. I've got two more races. Saturday, and March 12th. Every race this year has been warm. It's supposed to be in the mid 40's. Hopefully the sled wont melt down. It's a 60 mile race on a 3 mile lake coarse. I've been having a problem with the sled coming out of time. I'm thinking it's from cheep points. Matt  | ||
| No_rice |
yep, it was -20 something last weekend when we were up riding also. sure didnt seem bad though! it probably would be a little warm for the old beast this weekend Matt! I just canceled my plan to head north tonight. if i had gone up, i planned on pulling atleast the exhaust side, side panel off the sled to give it some more air this weekend. the clutch side, side panel could let to much wet stuff in and on the belt. especially as sloppy as the snow will probably be(or rain for that matter) i feel my snowmobiling days dwindling far to quickly currently... :-( hoping for some nice cold snowy weather when i get back from mexico in a couple weeks! | ||
| Loose1 |
The sno-jet ran good. It was a 3 mile track and we had to do 20 laps for a 60 mile race. There was about 4" of slush and it was slow going for the first few laps. Once a groove got warn in it wasn't bad at all. It was really hard to pass thou. If you got out of the groove it would slow you down 10 mph. On lap 9 I moved over for faster riders and in less than 2 sec. I went from 30mph to 0. I lost one nut on my right ski spreader. The ski then decided to do a 180 and wedge under my track, destroying my track. It took me almost a year to find that one. I now need to find one in less than two weeks so I can make the next race. Matt  | ||
| No_rice |
now that sucks! no one makes a repop? | ||
| Loose1 |
I don't think anyone has ever made an aftermarket one for these sleds. I've found a few that I can make work, but they either want too much for it or they're too far away. It's a 15 x 118 with a 2.52 pitch. The sno jets have a wider window than the others. I could change the drivers out to the internal drive and go with a 121" track but I don't want to add the extra weight or start all over with gearing and clutching. | ||
| Biffdotorg |
Last Saturday was amazing yet again. The clubs groomed before the Friday meltdown and the snow held on Saturday. We found 85 miles of groomed mashed potatoes!! The kids had a great time and only found a few thin spots. Sunday, the weather cooled to 22 degrees and the snow setup. I wake up to Facebook Messenger beeping at me at 7am. The club is messaging me to let me know they groomed all the trails overnight!! My facebook group has grown to 120 members, so they know I am a pipeline to riders. So the big boys packed up without the kids and we put on another 130+ miles on Sunday. Awesome fast riding in good conditions. Wouldn't you know, the club buzzed me again Wednesday telling me they got 2-3" of fresh snow. So we will keep abusing this snow till it goes away. My wife has become accustomed to being the Sled Widow Here is a clip from Saturday. Bump it up to 1080p!! | ||
| Loose1 |
Winter's about done. Sled's are getting put away this weekend. The arrow head of MN is supposed to get +10" of snow. We had the last race of the year. It was warm and wet. By the end of the race it was 70 deg. and the ice was gone. The ATV picking up the cones went in. It was a ton of fun. I placed 5th in the race and 5th in points in the circuit. I'm pleased with how I finished. Here's some pics. http://vintagesleds.com/bs/index.php/topic,260521. 0.html | ||
| No_rice |
looks like both you guys have been having a good time! i got jipped out of my last 2 trips by weather... the weekend before mexico was really warm, and the weekend after mexico the snow was almost gone by the time we landed in Minneapolis(well it was gone there, but almost gone in WI... BUUUTTT, I did show my winter pride! (if you cant see it, the shirt says summer sucks and has a sled) I'm sure i was the only guy on the beach REALLY wishing all this sand was snow...  and we did have a damn good time! although everyone of the very few times i had internet access I had to check the weather/snow reports since we were suppose to land in Minneapolis and go straight to Wisconsin riding... Sunset the first night in Ixtapa. Even i have to admit it was amazing!  view from our room  Every night was dress up for supper night, can a guy really complain...? As well as having awesome views from the mountains and open air balcony meals!        many, many beach handstands... even I was partaking in them   conversion rate equaled out to about $1300 for this bike brand new...  and someone spent ALOT of time narrowing this bug.  i guess this is a problem in the markets...  something very cool, was the fact that one of the first days we were there, they released 100,s of baby sea turtles right where we were staying.    On the way home, and Jenn doing her usual when we travel anywhere...  | ||
| Biffdotorg |
Awesome trip! Great pics. Good to see someone has some skin that tans well. I had two buddies bust ass to Bristows in St Cloud on Saturday only to buy a new SKS and head as far up the North Shore as they needed to utilize that thing! Amazing trip. I on the other hand, got to go rip with my dad in the wildcat. We had a trip up around Park Rapids planned for yesterday only to find all min-maintenance roads and state trails closed due to wet conditions! GRRRRR!!       | ||
| No_rice |
looks like regardless of the conditions you had some fun cruising with your dad! always worth the effort! and your buddies got to get a ride in on the sleds! I thought my sledding season was done for the year, BUUUUUUTTTTTTT......., a couple friends and i are heading to Wyoming next wednesday. I'm going to try my hand at some mountain riding... I had to get one last ride in, since... I Bought this beast monday! 2016 M8000 SnoPro Limited 153! Got my hands on a spring order sled(only way you could get them solid lime green lol). 232 miles on it. The limiteds come with new spindles and arms that are narrower and adjustable from 34.5-38.5. As well as the Fox float evol 3 shocks all the way around(my 13rr has the evol 3's up front). It also comes with a 3" Power Claw track instead of the 2.6 This one was their display sled, and the GM's demo sled for the trip to Togwotee they just cam back from saturday. So got a smoking deal on it as well as 0% for 5 years(doubt ill run the loan that long, but financed it because heck if i can use someone elses money for free, even better) I'm pretty stoked!           And I already shaved 17 pounds off the front of it by switching pipes... Although since this wont be a trail sled, I went with a little more "open" pipe then on my RR. This thing is L.A.F  | ||
| Pwnzor |
That bloody mary came with it's own snack bar!! Great pictures Tim, thanks for sharing! | ||
| Biffdotorg |
I did not know you could adjust the width on that front end without replacing all the A-arms and shocks. Very cool. There are a ton of deals out there with all the new releases. Especially in the arctic cat camp, as the some of the 2017's have hit the showfloor. My local dealer has the Mountain cat on the show floor and cannot wait for the new 9000's to come in next fall. We are going to Sneak Peek next week in Fargo. It's a must go show just to see the new hardware. |
