speed racer

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At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 19, 1971, the Johnson Pegasus snowmobile set a new world speed record for snowmobiles, hitting 140.6 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The previous record was 125.9 mph and was set on snow by an Arctic Cat sled powered by a gas turbine engine.
The news came just in time for the 1972 fall marketing season and was used to establish a high-tech brand image for Evinrude-Johnson snowmobiles. The other manufacturers cried foul and claimed that the "Salt Mobile" had not set a legitimate snowmobile speed record. Johnson countered that cars and motorcycles do not normally run on salt either, but that the salt flats were the safest place to conduct record runs.

Come the next winter, no one made any further attempt to beat the record, and the first speed run era effectively came to an end. Speed sleds had removed themselves too far in relevance from a trail sled, and the ice oval racing wars were heating up. Spending big bucks strictly on speed, made no sense, when winning on an oval racetrack was much more important to marketing and product development.

Johnson's record stood for 10+ years until innovative privateers again went in search of snowmobile speed records and got organized through NSSR. But why run on the Bonneville Salt Flats on a hot August day at an altitude of 4,220 ft. that costs you 20% in power compared to a Midwest lake in winter?

Why Johnson ran
Johnson's exercise was actually more like a "Hail Mary" pass to prove the viability of a long and costly engineering project. Pegasus had started as a styling exercise by Brooks Stevens, an industrial designer under contract with OMC. He is famous for his streamline designs, including Studebaker and Excalibur cars, Harley-Davidson motorcycles and the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.

Speed runs were a big deal back in the early 1970s and when the marketing guys took the Pegasus mockup to snowmobile shows, big crowds gathered and asked the ultimate question, "How fast does it go?" A little embarrassed, marketing guys had to admit that it was just a future concept. But the interest was so great that marketing demanded action from engineering.
Forcing the engine or chassis engineering departments to undertake the project would have caused a great interruption to production sled development. So, the Pegasus concept sled was deposited at the snowmobile "advanced engineering" department. This department was created to work undisturbed on future snowmobile designs, including engines, chassis, clutches and suspensions.

Charlie Allen led the department, and he had a good background in project development. Among his accomplishments was the development of turbochargers for bombers during WW II. He also had worked on Indy racers as an engineering problem solver, and one of his proudest possessions hung on his office wall, a picture of Mario Andretti with a thank you note for making his 1969 Indianapolis 500 winning car "fast and reliable."

Dick Wlezien was selected as the project engineer. A mechanical engineer with good experience in the basics, he picked out a crew of experienced technicians led by Jim Breckenfelt. Edgar Rose, vice president of engineering, made Pegasus one of his pet projects.

This was not going to be a "try this or that and see what happens" thing; it was instead to be a thoroughly analyzed, tested and developed project. 150 mph was a preliminary goal, but basic power numbers were needed to predict
performance.

Two V-4 "Stinger" outboard racing engines were selected for power. These produced 150 hp each on pump gas with a megaphone exhaust, so 300 hp was available. Regular snowmobile belt transmissions could not handle this kind of power in 1970, so a direct chain drive delivered power to the track via automotive drag racing designed "Crowerglide" clutches. The track ran on metallic boggie wheels and started out with a regular polyurethane production track.

Next, a large track dyno with two 400-horse Stuska water brakes was constructed in the parking lot behind the design offices in Waukegan, Ill. Testing was loud and obnoxious with two V-4 2-strokes belching through megaphone outlets. As testing began, the roar was usually followed by a loud bang, engines becoming quiet and a ruckus from the roof as hundreds of broken track pieces landed after having been thrown 50 ft. in the air as the polyurethane track came apart when the speed reached around 110 mph. There was a track problem!

The original track manufacturer could not offer a solution, so Goodyear was brought in to solve the problem. After much testing on the track dyno, Goodyear came up with a design that held up and they guaranteed to 150 mph. Wlezien's team now had good data on the drawbar power available at the track surface. Next came calculating the total air and ski drag and estimating top-end speed.

A small wind tunnel was built and forces were measured on a scale model. While this gave the team some idea about the coefficient of drag, it also demonstrated that the present shape was unstable. To solve the instability, a tailfin was added. The drag coefficient was estimated at 0.55, not a particularly low number as some road cars today have numbers around 0.40, but the large fin in back added some drag, as did the megaphone protruding from the hood.

Problems
With a frontal area of 12.2 sq. ft. and some ski drag, it was calculated that theoretically 150 mph should be attainable. Testing and finding a spot to run began in the winter of 1970-'71 and was fraught with problems. First was traction. The Goodyear track had very small cross ribs and the track would spin easily when power was applied. Bigger ribs were out of the question because they would add weight and Goodyear could not guarantee that the track would hold up at 150 mph.

Traction products were in their infancy and punching holes in the track and adding weight with studs would again bring problems with track reliability at high speeds. So the hunt was on for just the right hardpack conditions that would let the small cross ribs get some traction.
The second problem was that the calculations showed you needed about 2-3 miles to get up to speed. So the team needed a 5-mile straight with just the right hardpack. Finding a lake and preparing a strip would cost a fortune, if it even could be done. So the hunt started for a winter highway someplace.

A possible candidate was found near Hibbing, Minn., but preliminary testing was not good. The track still spun, the sled fishtailed, and attempting a run would be too dangerous. So the quest for a suitable site came to an end with the arrival of spring, and the Pegasus project was without even one good run. Pegasus was well engineered, and had proven it would hold together under load on the track dyno, but good traction and a long enough run was needed. A crisis was looming, a lot of money and time had been invested, and marketing needed something to show for it.

The light bulb goes on
Charlie Allen finally came up with the idea after several "out of the box" brainstorming sessions. Charlie was originally from out West and he finally said: "If we want to set speed records, let's just go to the Bonneville Salt Flats where the cars and motorcycles run. There's plenty of room to run, and the salt is white just like snow."

The question was: would there be traction?
Dick Wlezien took a race sled and ran it off at the gravel test strip in Milwaukee, then loaded it up and headed for Utah. The report came back: "plenty of traction on the salt" and the project had new life. Everything was packed and the team headed west. Engineering calculations showed that they would lose about 20% power at the test site's 4,220 ft. altitude and the theoretical top speed should be 142 mph after a 2.5-mile run. Driver Dick Hansler made a test run and reported good traction and stability and everything was made ready for a record attempt.

The test run
J.O. Cocker, the official timer of the Southern California Timing Association for the Bonneville Nationals was brought in to verify speed. With good traction and a 3-mile run, Hansler flew through the traps at 140.625 mph for a new snowmobile world record.

The engineering project was a success, and marketing had what it needed: an official speed record and something to be proud of at the snowmobile shows. So in the end it all came down to a strong track, good traction and a long flat run.

Other manufacturers protested, but soon realized that their speed attempts had hit a wall, and records could not be broken on snow or ice without new technology in track design and traction products. They all folded their speed programs and concentrated their efforts on ice oval racing.

10 years later
Nothing much happened for 8 to 10 years until one day I got a call from Tom Earhardt who was working on a speed sled. I told him what Charlie and Dick had run into and he contacted Goodyear for a track. Tom ingeniously solved the traction problem by making very thin and light spikes and then mounting them through the inside drive lugs. This gave the studs good support and did not weaken the track.

Soon Tom was making good progress on prepared ice tracks with a Mercury V-6 outboard engine in a Polaris chassis. In the early 1980s he broke the 150 mph barrier in an I.S.R. timed event on Lake Minocqua in Wisconsin. Speed runs soon blossomed on NSSR prepared and shaved ¼-mile tracks, until falling victim to lack of support when manufacturers pulled their money and put it into snocross.

Before the end of the second speed-run era, Marv Jorgenson and Jaws III had the record on ice at more than 190 mph in the ¼-mile. Jaws III was powered by 3 Mercury outboard engines.
Snowmobile speed records are now set on ¼-mile asphalt drag strips, some being posted at the American Snowmobiler-sponsored race at Martin, Mich., each September. Sleds with turbocharged engines are now doing 7-second runs and hitting 170 mph in the ¼-mile. Speeds could be even higher, if the distance were longer.

Last Sept. 27, at the airport in Val d' Or, Que., Francis Morin piloted a turbocharged Yamaha to an I.S.R.-certified snowmobile world record of 210.28 mph over a 1-mile track. Rumors have it that Morin is headed for the Bonneville Salt Flats next to up his speed with an even longer run.

The quest for speed lives on!