Another Snowmobile...

Since I am just one person, the need for me to have another snowmobile might seem a little silly. I mentioned in my last post, that I would explain and that is what I am going to do!

This story starts in November of 2005, my friend and participant in our annual snowmobile trips, Brian Moline, (pictured here) was the only one of our group who didn't own a snowmobile. He was talking to my brother Michael at my wedding and Michael mentioned to him that his boss had just bought a new snowmobile and was looking to sell his old one. Brian went over to look at it and a couple weeks later he bought it for $1400.

The snowmobile is a 1996 Polaris 600 XCR SP. My brother's boss was the original owner and it had about 6500 miles on it. The snowmobile ran great, it just needed a new track, springs, and the shocks recharged. Brian, with the help of a few of us, had the shocks recharged, and installed the new springs. About a year later he installed a new track with studs.

Brian rode this sled in the 05-06, 06-07, and 07-08 riding seasons. I don't think he even put 1000 miles total. A few minor things had gone wrong with the sleds, a bolt on the track tensioner stripped out, an idler wheel went bad, but overall these are routine items that need to be replaced on a snowmobile.

During the February 2008 trip during an inspection of his sled, Brian noticed that one of the axles had came loose and he lost a idler wheel, bent the rear swing arm, and lost two axle shaft bolts. I'm not sure how this could happen, but I'm guessing something didn't get tightened up all the way. Brian made some phone calls on getting his sled fixed, brought the rear suspension home to fix (leaving the rest of the sled up north) but ended up buying a new sled. This left him in a situation in which he needed to get rid of his old sled, since he was storing it in Larson's garage at the cabin! He was going to sell it to a snowmobile salvage yard, but since my snowmobile needed a track, the track on the Polaris was brand new and had studs, I offered to buy the sled from him so I could swap the track off.

We transported my new parts sled home and I got the rear suspension from Brian at his house here in Bloomington. Dad and I spent about 2 hours repairing the rear suspension. We bent back and welded the bent swing arm bracket, replaced the one damaged and one missing idler wheels (including the spacers and bushings), replaced the worn out slides, fixed the shock mount bushings, and replaced the suspension bumpers. So basically a hundred bucks in parts and a couple hours was all it took to get this sled functional again.

You might wonder why I am putting the time and money into rebuilding the rear suspension if all I wanted the snowmobile for in the first place was for the track. Well, I guess I would hate to see a perfectly good snowmobile go to waste, plus when I get it back together, it will be very easy to resell. It turns out the my good friend (and regular comment leaver on my blog) was going to be taking snowmobile safety classes. Since Randy lives in the VERY north metro and has some land, I'm guessing he figured taking the classes would be fun. I mentioned this snowmobile to him and he seemed very interested. So since I know where this sled is possibly going, I am making sure that everything is 100% before I give it to him. I even had my super talented Mom sew up the rip in the cover!

All I have to do now is the hard work, swap the tracks and reinstall the rear suspension. I should be able to get that tackled in the next week or so. After that, I will heading north to deliver the Polaris to Randy! I posted a few pictures of it below, it is still missing the rear suspension, but it gives you an idea of what good shape this sled is in.