Wake up call!
Also placed this under general snowmobiling for the dark side.
Can you imagine if your new water cooled dirt bike needed radiators because the factory figured the coolant within the cylinder was enough at start up.
Does it mater if the ABS on your Goldwing was perfected before you head down a mountain pass towing a trailer.
Nissan has a CVT in the Altima now, do you think they will rely on the housewife driving it to change a blown belt. NO, they built and tested till they trusted it.
Snowmobile tech is in the hands of five manufacturers compared to over one hundred, 30 years ago. They are so busy buying magazine articles, shootouts, and websites, they don’t have time or care to worry about the many loyal customers they are turning away to some other form of motor sports.
At the same time ignoring the future market, children!
Belt, clutch, engine, track, and structural failures are more common today than fouled spark plugs.
These Baby Boomer engineers reliving their 70’s high school hotrod days are putting together and selling unproven machines whom their predessesors would have left in the R and D department for future testing.
You forty-fifty somethings accept these POS’s because most of you buy new for your image, if you were such bad *** riders there would not be anything left of the machines the teens and twenty somethings are inheriting from you. Check the odometer and you will see most of you didn’t even log a thousand miles
Just like an old Honda XR200, you can pull a 1982 Yamaha/John Deere/Scorpion/etc, 340 snowmobile out from the dust, tinker a little, clean the carb, change the plugs, and ride it all day on the twenty year old belt last installed.
The future used market for today’s big displacement obese, unreliable machines will only be in the recycled materials.
I bought into the Snow hawk idea back in 2001 because it made sense, less power, less weight, same performance, if not more.
The people whom think I am just trying to sell something are dead wrong.
The more time I spend with it the more people around me see the light.
It sickened me to see these bought and sold magazines write small articles suggesting how much longer this machine would survive. They should have been praising its idea and suggesting the larger manufacturers take it up. Of course that would have meant the writers/not riders would have actually had to learn how to ride one in order to give the readers a real review.
Since I am still young enough, and have not many responcibilities, this issue pushed me to change my career and go after something I believed in.
2006 I quit my job and rode my motorcycle from Seattle to Quebec to try to convince AD Boivin to let me rekindle the fire.
Even they have started to believe the more power equals more interest theory.
That is true for some but not all I insisted.
The same issues, price, power, and reliability are starting to plague the Snow Hawk, and I want to take a few steps back.
The only way I will prove them wrong is with demand.
It should be obvious to most of you that I and others have created the interest, and increased the demand. Not to many used/new machines around anymore that are not in clenched hands.
The limited effort I am willing to putt towards this needs to increase and I think those of you current owners, believing dealers, and future wanters should pipe up and speak your minds.
There are about 1,500 of these machines out in this world and a hand full for sale, you one thousand plus need to get off your *** and yell your head off.
If you don’t your kids will be dumbed down with a legacy of the backwards tech created by a bunch of worn out Boomers long since moved away to places like Arizona, and Florida shuffling around their Corvette’s and Harley’s.
You wouldn’t give them a fifty cal. If there were no more BB guns, so why is their next sled from the already to big 500cc Phazer, going to be a 1000cc NITRO!
Tony Sexton
