Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Gets me excited

Took the dog out around 10pm last night, it had been sleeting and we had maybe 1/4" on the ground. Buster (my dog) has never seen snow before (he's from Arkansas), he thought it was great, licked it off the pavement.

Anyway today I found a cool clip on Youtube:


Makes me want a beater sled. Somehow I always get caught up in making my sleds "just a little nicer" until I don't really want to beat on them anymore...

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Tigre runs!

Again proving that putting sleds away correctly is a good idea I fired up the Tigre today. It took maybe 10 pulls and then a little rough running before it settled down and ran nice. I took it for a spin around the yard and put it back. I'm well pleased with it. Need to get a chance to haul the TX-L over to Randy's. I should check when he's open next week...

Randy still doesn't have my Grand Touring ready but he checks with me everytime I'm in. I think next time I should bring some money for a deposit, that should get him moving. Turns out its a '95, manufactured in '94 which is the year I graduated high school. It'll be interesting having a sled so new.

It was in the 20s all day today, spitting snow too. It won't be long.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Going to the dark side

The awesome thing about last winter was the boatload of snow. The sucky thing about last winter was that I didn't get to ride very much because of nearly constant breakdowns.
Thats pretty much been my pattern. The last time we had huge snow was '01-'02 and it was all I could do to keep my '70 Ski-Doo running reasonably well. Even then I had issues with headlights and such.
I guess all portents say this year is supposed to be big snow and deep freeze so I've decided its time to get a newer sled. I hit Randy's on Saturday and told him I want to sell off a couple vintage riders and get something newer, he showed me a Ski-Doo 670 Gran Touring (think thats what it is anyway), mid '90s sled. IFS, heated grips, port for a helmet warmer, reverse, electric start, blah blah blah. It wouldn't start when I was there but it hasn't been run much and the battery died. It was a bugger to pull over so a good battery is critical. Randy's gonna put a new battery in and I'll go back this week and check it out. The price is right so I'll probably grab it. It needs a couple idler wheels but I can surely handle that.
In exchange I'll be selling at least one sled, probably the TX-L since its my most valuable machine. It needs new crank seals so I told Randy to come get it and put them in. I haven't decided yet if the Tigre will go also but it probably will. I'll wait for the snow to come since that one isn't as overtly valuable...
Staying with us will be the '70 Ski-Doo and the '71 Arctic Cat Panther rotary. I've never gotten to really ride the wankle panther so it'll be high on the project list. Thats the other part of this is to reduce the number of projects to a more manageable number. with only 3 sleds I've reduced my potential projects by one... I hope anyway.

-Curt