AmSnow.com is now SnoWest.com
Good but not perfect However, not everything was perfect with the product. Because of the hard load they were subject to under the slide rail, they started breaking at unusually high rates. We had used a case hardener low carbon steel, as was standard at the time, but it was not good enough in this new aggressive mounting position.
Eastman was ahead of the curve again. He gave us a call and wanted us to build Polaris a special batch with a higher carbon through-hardened steel that Polaris used for cleats. Polaris would supply the material. We had them to the team in time for Eagle River. The new material held up and since it was through-hardened, Polaris’ team could grind them sharper for better penetration.
The rest of the racers used the regular ones, which broke easier for the rest of the season. They just changed them more often. Changing studs in between heats was pretty routine at that time, and no one complained too much because they all liked the Kicker’s advantage.
The following season everyone could get the Kickers made with the new, improved material. By then we also made some aluminum bars with longer ice picks, which worked well for drag racers.
The Kickers gave our small company the break we needed, thanks in large part to the testing and endorsement by Brad Hulings and the Polaris Race Team. It also started a good relationship with Polaris that later ended up with a Privateer Support Program for our AMS-Oil sponsored team with Tim Bender as our driver. That in turn led to the development of the “
Aero Sled” based on the Polaris factory race sleds. We also gained another advantage from the Polaris IFS revolution. The company that stamped out our studs, Mechanical Industries in Milwaukee, had tried to launch a new ski suspension called the “Cobra” with a regular coil-over shock working on a scissor action lever in the ski itself. This worked better than regular leaf springs, and they wanted us to be the product’s distributor.
In this case the timing was just right. Once the IFS concept took off, a lot of drivers bought the new lever action ski suspension as a stopgap to be competitive with the IFS sleds.
Sometimes you don’t know where fate will take you, and after losing the Evinrude job and being fired by Kawasaki, we landed on our feet with several good products and managed to keep our small company busy doing what we loved, going racing.