Greetings and welcome!
I got to play on snowmobiles a little yesterday afternoon. I could have gone riding, but I decided not to. Test runs in the driveway were pretty gravelly and the road shoulder at the end of the driveway looked uninviting. At that point I decided to use the time working on sleds in anticipation of better days for snow.
We are still on track for a couple of clippers in the short term. The first one is expected overnight tonight into Friday morning. It could go 1-3, I’d accent the lower end of that and hope for a nice surprise. The storm for Friday night into Saturday is a little more organized, and 1-3 or 2-4 is a better bet.
Behind those two is a parade of similar clipper type storms every few days throughout the 16 days on the GFS.
If we had not lost our base in sunny spots and roads from the New Year’s rain storm, this would be the season from heaven. Think about it.. daytime highs in the 20-25 degree range, lows in the teens or single digits, a nice base, and an inch or three of snow every few days. If that bare stuff had more than 2″ of puffy snow on it, it would be a winter wonderland.
So I got a little time in on the sleds today. The XLT is ready to go down the road as was the plan right along. I’m going to miss that one, she really scoots. I can’t run it with the pipes, and without them and the big carbs it is just another XLT. The plan was to liquidate that and some of my XLT spare parts.
The nice RXL also cleared the shop after the usual pre-season stuff and the rock incident. That one is happy and was fun to test out.
RXL #2 is in the shop with a pre-season check and a broken ski. The ski is on my bench waiting to get welded. The pre-season check went ok with the exception of one wheel on the suspension.
I haven’t encountered this before, but apparently some hungry mice went to work and ate half of a suspension wheel. Half of it is fine, half has the rubber chewed off. It wasn’t a normal wheel failure, it was eaten.
The fun part is that it is an inside wheel on the front torque arm shaft. It’s no big deal, but the skid needs to come out and come apart, making it a lot more work than if the little #%&*s had eaten an outside wheel. Ya just gotta laugh when you get stuff like that.
I will be back on that as soon as possible, that is my main ride of choice. It has the big carbides, a high windshield, and a fresh engine.
Right now I am waiting to see more snow. It sure would be lot better with the 3-5 or 4-6 that we hope to get out of these clippers. There wasn’t much there when I was testing the sleds today.
That is it from here, have a good Thursday and thank you for visiting!
RJB