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Simple pleasures
These were simple machines that could run atop the snow, or so I was told. They were not much more than a tunnel with a track and skis, and an industrial looking engine with a belt-drive system and a crude muffler.
People were racing these things, I was told, and there was a big meet coming up at a nearby golf course.
A customer with a single-cylinder Ski-Doo asked if I knew anything about modifying engines, so I ported the cylinder and built him an expansion chamber exhaust. Since most were running stock mufflers, and a megaphone was radical, the expansion chamber was high-tech.
Off we went to the races! He jumped it into any class he could and took 4 firsts and some top three finishes. I was impressed by the amount of snowmobiles and people there. Hundreds of sleds and thousands of people were all out having an absolute ball on a beautiful March day.
As soon as word got out that I knew how to work on engines I was dialing in ignitions and setting points at $10 a crack and coming home with what seemed like a small fortune in my pocket. What still sits in my memory was the sheer enthusiasm for the gift of being outside and having fun in the snow with this new recreational vehicle, crude as it was.
Three years later I landed as a project engineer at the Evinrude /Johnson Snow-mobile Division of Outboard Marine Corp. (OMC), just as the first golden age of snowmobiling was getting its feet and accelerating to full steam.
December 1970 found me at Ironwood, Mich., for the Olympics of Snowmobiles to check out real factory racing action and all the new technology. There were two main venues, the cross country race that went over fields and through the woods, and the ice oval races at the fairgrounds.
Big semi-trailers from factory teams were parked in the pits, Ski-Doo had three rigs and fielded 27 factory drivers. People were everywhere, from the pits to the grandstand, and in long waiting lines at the restaurant across the street.
I borrowed an Evinrude Bobcat to check out the cross country course since that race was run the day before and it was now open to the public. What a learning experience!
I had been racing motocross bikes at the time, and considered myself in pretty good shape. But driving the Bobcat through a mogul section as fast as I could go, at the limit of crashing, I got the surprise of my life when I got passed by two kids riding double on a Panther. They were going through the mogul section as if it were barely there.
Obviously the Bobcat was far behind in handling and the chassis was pretty much obsolete compared to the competition. With the engine in the center and a boogie wheel suspension, it was no match for a more modern Arctic Cat with slide-rail suspension and its engine down low and located up front. Technology was already making sleds better.