crank end failures
Your crank end falling off has been over the years common for snowmobiles, some models have suffered bad reps because it was a real common occurance. The laydown cat have been one of the best for minimum crank problems..............so you really did have a problem.
Many point fingers at out of balance clutch's and that will do it. Far more common is bad belts. At 100 bucks plus a wack for belts we all want to get all the goodie we can out of belts, but might be false economy.
The belt issue is uneven side wear on a belt, burned spot on belt from leaving your brake lock on when you gas it, or having track locked in snow and wacking throttle and burning a side divot in the belt. Running a belt like that will almost always knock out clutch weigths, sets up unwanted harmonic vibrations especially if you get jetting along at 50 plus, eats clutch center bushing and secondary bushing. You can't put a 12' cheater on the end of that crank and break it, but bad harmonics will fatigue crack the crank end until of just drops off.
so if you put that bad boy together, make sure its running along smooth at 30mph and no vibration in your footboards and feet, don't feel perfect, start checking, its not the bouncy engine at idle that kills cranks, its that not quite right vibration you often feel in your feet.
Your crank end falling off has been over the years common for snowmobiles, some models have suffered bad reps because it was a real common occurance. The laydown cat have been one of the best for minimum crank problems..............so you really did have a problem.
Many point fingers at out of balance clutch's and that will do it. Far more common is bad belts. At 100 bucks plus a wack for belts we all want to get all the goodie we can out of belts, but might be false economy.
The belt issue is uneven side wear on a belt, burned spot on belt from leaving your brake lock on when you gas it, or having track locked in snow and wacking throttle and burning a side divot in the belt. Running a belt like that will almost always knock out clutch weigths, sets up unwanted harmonic vibrations especially if you get jetting along at 50 plus, eats clutch center bushing and secondary bushing. You can't put a 12' cheater on the end of that crank and break it, but bad harmonics will fatigue crack the crank end until of just drops off.
so if you put that bad boy together, make sure its running along smooth at 30mph and no vibration in your footboards and feet, don't feel perfect, start checking, its not the bouncy engine at idle that kills cranks, its that not quite right vibration you often feel in your feet.
