Pro RMK with HM turbo - The Skadi Mobile

[Skadi]

Ok, so I'm FINALLY getting around to completing my build this season. Last season, RIGHT at the end, we threw an HM turbo on my sled but really didn't get the time or money to fix a few other issues with the sled so that it was set up to run a turbo. So I KNOW I wasn't getting all my power to the snow! In order to remedy that. I have a new track from Camoplast, trying the new Peaks 2.5"! In order to fit that in my tunnel and STILL have enough room for our nice heavy wet Washington snow I needed to make a little more room in there. Obvious solution is smaller drivers but I needed to have some chain case modifications done to make that work. The new Avid drivers are ordered and the modification is planned out -I hope it works!! Naw, I know it will. Curt with Fastrax AND Allen with Timbersled are teaming up to help me tackle getting rid of some of these 'power robbers' so I'm in REALLY good hands!! Once I get all that done there will be some fine tuning with clutching and gearing but we will work on that as we go -nothing like being the guinea pig eh??

The other issue I was fighting last season was tuning. I'm a TOTAL novice to it so factor that and the fact that the Pro is VERY finicky at low boost levels and you have a VERY rough day for my shooters!! (go hit that chute.. ok, get your camera set up and then hang out for about an hour while I tune my sled in!! hahahahah, poor guys!!) Anyway, to make my sled run more consistently AND set it up for my style of riding (which is really the hard thing cause it goes from trees to HUGE chutes to jumps all in one day!!) we're going to do a cold air intake to try to take my intake temperatures at least more consistent through out the day. Again, I'm looking to Curt with Fastrax to work up an intake for this machine and make her BREATHE!!

Next, I need to look at suspension. At the end of the year Allen adjusted my skid so that it was set up for turbo on spring snow and MAN it worked good! however, during the course of a full season I will run into ALL sorts of riding conditions, snow conditions as well as just my preferences on certain days! So, I'm upgrading to the ultra adjustable NEW Timbersled skid. of course I'm sticking with my Exit shocks and I'm even going one more step further this season and doing the Exit shocks in the TS front end!! She's gonna be handling GOOD this season!!

HOWEVER, first, I needed to fix my boo-boo from last season... So this weekend I have two nights with my sled before she's off to Puyallup for some quality time with Curt. Daryn and I were scrambling to get her torn down and get the footwell piece changed out.

My ITTY BITTY spot of damage that is causing a WHOLE lot of work!!

notice the break in the piece that connects the footwell to the rail... I SWEAR a yeti jumped out and put a rock RIGHT in front of me when i was cliumbing a chute right at the end of last season. he was big and mean and scary and that rock totally kicked my butt! You['ll have to buy a copy of Flirting with Danger to see if you can spot the yeti! heheheheh

Let the tear down begin. Sled vids blasting in the background and both D and me hustling around to get this thing pulled down and totally fixed back up before she heads over to the coast on Sunday for the cold air intake to be fabbed up by Fastrax. Nuthing like adding a little lack of time to put the pressure on!

And the tear down gets more involved...

Unfortunately we will have to do ALL of this all over again when we go to put the motor plate in but we don't have time to do it now so it's just fix the cosmetics and save the motor plate until after the snow shows while the snow is building a base (since I didn't pay extra for the stump radar to warn me where they are in that bottomless pre season snow!)

Grinding rivets... Soooo fun....

All week I've been doing a little back and forth with Arctic FX on a custom wrap for my Skadi mobile. I'm SUPER excited with how custom they were able to make it for me and it should get here in time to slap it on before the Denver snow show!!!

I'll add a few pics from last season as well just to have them all in one place, I know I posted them at SOME point... but here are the turbo build pics!!

 

[Snow Duck]

This looks Awsome Skadi and cant wait to see MOAR!!! pics and the finished product as that wrap looks way cool...And thanks for posting it in the Build Fourm..

 

[RalleyTuned]

If you need help with the tuning, shoot me a PM. I have a tool that makes tuning in the mtns much easier! Sled looks incredibly badass

 

[kbl6z]

Very nice. Its gunna bevsweet when its all finished

 

[mountainhorse]

Nice EM...Git Er Dun!!

It will be nice to see the chaincase mods and Peaks track in there... make sure to take lots of pics.

Keep us filled in with lots of pics.

 

[Skadi]

You got it boss!! I got a few more to put up but I thought I would wait until I had a little more to report back on! I'm picking her up from Fastrax this weekend and then it will be off to the races with chassis mods and getting her pretty for the shows!!

I even got some pics of me working on it, gawd you should heard D grumble when I told him he had to take a few pics while I was working too, jeesh, silly boy!

Starting to get goodies in the mail, the UPS guy knows it's fall when he sees my address like a rash on the delivery sheets! hahahhaha. He totally commented one year; now he expects it!

 

[Skadi]

The wrapping process:

First I had to work with Arctic Fx to come up with a custom wrap for me that would incorporate the whole Skadi theme and have some bright colors as well as just look good so that it would show of my sponsors!! Acrtic Fx was FANTASTIC to work with and had some REALLY creative ideas!! We went with a Skadi image as well as some runes all over it... We also did a norse symbol of protection on the hood (let's hope it helps!!). We also incorporated the crow as it was the animal often depicted with Skadi

Once the wrap got here I had to strip off the old, including my trucker girls...
Take one for the team ladies...

I DIDN'T rip off my stickers on the tunnel for vin number and such... they were starting to peel too and left an ugly wrinkle... But I wasn't sure what the rules are around that?? for resale?? If you're doing a tunnel wrap on a NOT new sled where those stickers are starting to peel I would look into if it's msart to take those off, it certainly would look better with them off!

Next was cutting out all the pieces and taping them in the general area they were to go.

Then, carefully and painstakingly line up, stick, rub and repeat!

The Pro has a LOT of angles and small pieces. Made it easier in some ways and harder in others. Getting everything to line up was tough!! luckily the kit was cut perfectly and about all you had to do was line up around a cut out and know that you were right on. granted it took a little more work than just plopping it on there but Arctic Fx really makes a quality product and I was amazed at how relatively easy it went on!

The finished product!

Side view.

I'm missing one more sticker and vents still but she had to make the schedule to get up to Timbersled this weekend! She's spending some time with Allen right now getting the new rear skid put on AS WELL AS the barkbuster front end. All with exit shocks of course!!! I ran Allen's older skid and am SUPER stoked to try out this new one and really excited to see what the front end feels like with Exits and the barkbusters!!!

 

[Jonce]

Nice shop. I see that you watch sledding movies when working on the sled too, keeps the motivation up.

 

[gmustangt]

what kinda coolant are you running?

 

[Skadi]

hmmm, nothing special for coolant that I know about. I could ask Shane with HM and see if he put something special in there but I don't think so....

 

[Jonce]

I just looked at the Polaris coolant bottle last night at the dealership, on the label it said mixed ratio was 60/40 and its good to -62F.

Debating if I will spend $24 per gallon, probably will just because.

 

[Skadi]

Alright! I just got my baby back from Timbersled where she went to have the suspension updated. I chose to step into Allen's new rear skid due to the adjust-ability of it. I ride in NUMEROUS conditions and my 'style' generally covers a pretty broad spectrum so I needed a skid that I could adjust throughout the season and even through out the day if I chose!

Since Allen was doing my skid swap I thought I would have him do my track swap as well. I decided to go with the new Peaks track from Camoplast and it wasn't quite as simple as just a track swap for me!! Due to some of the conditions we're forced to ride in here in the beautiful Northwest we thought it best to give my sled just a little more clearance through the tunnel. The 2.5" track with the stock drivers was TIGHT!! Allen and Curt with Fastrax and Eric (Mtnhorse) thought long and hard about the BEST way to go about this. There were a few ideas and we decided to go with the cheapest first since we all know we're all watching our pocketbooks these days!! The solution was to mill out a portion of the chaincase so that smaller drivers could fit! Easy!! (well, easy for a shop like Fastrax to do!!) Curt advised Allen on the best way to do this so that it could be done quickly but in the future if I need to do this I will send it to Curt as he's getting himself fully set up to have this milled and to turn it around quickly!

Next, I got my super sweet Avid drivers pressed on!

And, the anti stab kit which is now VERY advisable!

Allen also addressed an issue in my chain case surrounding the stock tensioner which is made of a soft material that wears quickly leaving slack in the chain and depositing it's material into my chain case oil! thanks for looking out for me Allen!

Alright! Now we're ready for the new skid and new track! (HUGE thanks to Allen with Timbersled for helping me do all of this and to Curt at Fastrax for being a phone call away and helping generate ideas! Curt will be offering this chaincase mod this next season and I will have some R&D in on how it works for you all!)

The new skid ready to go in!

The new Peaks track from Camoplast, holy heck this thing looks BURLY!!! I can't wait to try it out!!

Install COMPLETE (yippieeee!!) closeups...

Chain case roller updated (to a Poo 900 roller!)

New drivers, new skid, anti stab kit and chain case cut away.

A little bit closer...

 

[Skadi]

Ok, next was my front end conversion! I had finally saved up enough to step into Timbersled's front end coupled with the Z-broz Exit shocks!! Whooo-hooo!!! Can't wait to see how she feels this season!

Side by side of old and new!

Install complete!

All of this was happening over a week where I couldn't go up and look a the progress! FINALLY last Sunday I got to go pick her up! I also was lucky enough to get a tour of Allen's shop while I was up there... Holy shop envy batman!! Daryn and I were DROOLING!!! Allen has a VERY well organized shop that he keeps really clean. I could tell his commitment to producing quality work is deep-seated just from snooping around his shop! He showed us all the internal workings of my suspension as well as all the 'extra mile' things that he does -such as hard anodizing pieces that aren't even seen so that they last longer as well as look cleaner since they won't 'drool' like aluminum tends to after a season of getting rubbed on. Both Daryn and I were VERY impressed and it made me even happier for my choice in suspensions, I knew it would work but now I know it will work and look good for years to come!!

Hanging out at the Timbersled shop

Getting the tour of one of the coolest shop's I've had the pleasure of hanging out it!!

And, FINALLY I get to see the finished product!!!

Next she is off to XXXModRods to get loaded up and brought to Denver!!! Everyone stop by the XXXModRods booth in Devner to get a peek at the work done to her! We will have some info on the Timbersled suspension there with her and you can see how burly this new Peaks track from Camoplast looks I will be set up with Z-broz in their booth so if you have any questions about the machine feel free to come over and ask me!!

 

[diamonddave]

Sure is a long way from the 05 Rev days eh, EM????

 

[Skadi]

a LONG ways!!!! a LONG and HAPPY ways!!

 

[shaneo11]

nice lookin sled!

 

[mountainhorse]

Great job Emily... glad to see it all worked out!!

The extra clearance from the 7 tooth, 2.86" pitch drivers will free up a bit of HP for you.

It is a Long way from the old 2 ply track days when it was a concern to run a 7 tooth driver... that track is nice and light as well.






.

 

[Scott]

Emily, that Timbersled rear skid looks LIGHT. What does that bugger weigh?

Boy, everything looks really GREAT.

Looks like Shane had his hands full. LOL. Was that during the initial turbo install or were those pics recent? (I might have missed that info in the reading. LOL)

 

[Skadi]

Those were during initial install... this build took place over a few months... I got the turbo put on late spring and only had a few rides on her but noticed quite a few set up issues I needed to adjust... so this summer it's been to the drawing board and putting pennies in my piggy bank! I'm pretty sure i have a LOT of those issues sorted out now and with some of the changes now we need to do some fine tuning on clutching and gearing...

I will be doing a cold air intake from Fastrax too to help mellow the tuning out on this bad boy cause I still kinda stink at tuning!

Let me ask Allen about weights and i bet he can tell me exactly! I know he weight the tracks and though I shed weight in my skid I picked it up again in that track, she is BUUUURRLLY!!! I know he weight my stock track and the new one, lemme get some numbers and get back to you!

Can't wait to have ya ride it this season, gonna be a real ripper with all my little 'issues' dealt with!

I might have to talk to Shane about an intercooler so I can turn her up!!! but for now I need to learn how to tune and have some FUUUUNNNN!!!

 

[Scott]

Sweeeeet, I'd love to ride it again and compare before and after.