A new whip

 Well, a new-to-me groomer. The former operator left the club so we needed to shuffle around a little and I drew the short straw. Fortunately we had been training another operator and it made more sense to put him in the ASV which parks with the Pisten Bully. That way if he had trouble Ben would be close by to help.

Anyway this beast is a 1989 Tucker Sno-Cat 2000.

It's got a Cummins 6BT like a Dodge pickup and as you can see, 4 tracks.

I've heard it called "Farm equipment with aspirations" and that's not wrong. It's an interesting beast but not without issues. The drivetrain is really simple, the 6BT mates to a 3 speed automatic transmission and single speed transfer case. The axles are, I think, Spicer truck rear axles that pivot at the centerline of the axle. So the tracks are firmly attached to the axle and the whole axle moves. Both axles pivot so its effectively "four wheel (track) steer". This one in particular has something wrong with it and steers really hard at the limits, it also doesn't seem to steer as far as our other machine. I don't know what the issue is but its annoying.

I had terrible trouble with it icing up early on. The output of the fuel tank is right in the very bottom of the tank and I think it had some water that settled there. That water froze and in cold temps the machine would just barely run. The first time I took it out it took half an hour or more to get it warmed up enough to go out. Fortunately that run seems to have cleared the blockage. Before the second run I changed the water separator and fuel filter and it ran fine.

Some chucklehead took a side by side out in wet snow, this was real fun to fix

Driving is an odd experience, the automatic transmission has its work cut out for it making shifts with all the drag of the machine. A few times I've been fooled into thinking that we were losing power when in reality I just needed the machine to downshift. The 4 tracks are *relatively* nimble as long as you're going forward, it'll slalom fairly well. The 4 track system is nowhere near as nimble as either of the 2 track machines we have though and it's REALLY slow in reverse. I plowed snow with it one day and it took forever. I'd have been better off getting the ASV started, waiting while it warmed up and then plowing...

The most positive thing is that it's fast. It'll pull a pretty good load of snow at 10mph where the ASV can only do serious work in slow gear, 5-6mph. This is important for the run the Tucker is assigned which goes from Winchendon, MA to Barre, MA. The first trip was down and back and took something like 9 hours. That one we had to open a bunch of gates and of course deal with the machine being frozen. The second run I only went one way and made it in about 4.

Angie went on the second run with me and said she liked the Tucker more than the ASV. I'll put that down to it having been years since she was in the ASV...

Broken Groomer Part 2

It was the beginning of April, the snow cover was decent but the days were warm. We decided it was too warm to groom at night, the snow wouldn't move good so we made a plan to groom first thing in the morning, 6am. This would be our last day out, club picnic and the trails would close the next day so get the trails nice.

Everything south of Lake Dennison was already closed so just a quick run to groom the park. I only have one regular loop inside the park, Ben does all the rest but we figured after I'd done my normal loop I could pick up some of the other stuff. Mike was riding right seat, his second trip out with me, I had plans to get him some stick time.

Just as we turned onto the main drag I knew we had problems, little tendrils of steam. I'd never groomed when it was warm though and just passed it off for that but about the time I got the drag full of snow and grooming good the little tendrils became a big cloud, uh oh...

Looking under the machine I could see a geyser of coolant, I couldn't tell where from but it had to be a heater hose to the cab. We limped the machine to the beach where the picnic was to be held.

I didn't get any pictures but the cab tips up so the driver's door is about 4' up. With that tipped I could see a ragged hole in one of the heater hoses. Apparently this had happened to Chris the year before but on the other hose, he'd fixed that with a union connector. This time I used the same union to connect the two heater hoses together, topped up the coolant and drove it back to the yard...

A couple months later we moved it to my house. I wish I had pictures of it, the machine is heavy, like 9,000# heavy, too much to pull with a normal pickup. Glenn came with a 3 axle dump truck and trailer. The ASV looked puny on his big trailer.

 With the right seat out I could get to the heater, fortunately there are two unions right in the middle of the picture which were a lot easier to access than the heater core itself. I sent this picture to the other groomer operators with "That escalated quickly" as the caption.


I got a funny look from the parts guy when I asked for 18 FEET of 3/4" heater hose, apparently thats how much they normally sell each month. It took 17.5 feet in total...

These are the old hoses. Theres a hydraulic leak at the controls which drips down through the access hole below the cab and pools on these hoses which then deteriorate from the oil. I intend to fix the hydraulic leak, I think its just o-rings but I want to do it with help from somebody who really knows what they're doing, for now its not too much of a problem. I put a catch pan with a pig pad in it under the leak, hopefully it'll will prevent the new hoses from deteriorating.

Broken Groomer Part 1

Well, its not a dead sled but groomers are not without troubles.

Early on last season Ben had trouble with the Pisten Bully, none of the hydraulics at the front of the machine would cooperate. He couldn't lift the blade or manipulate it in any way. A little investigation revealed water in the hydraulic oil. After running the engine for half an hour or so the fluid would warm up enough so the water would go liquid and everything would work until the next time. This, of course, was a big issue. We swapped the fluid (its actually Automatic Transmission fluid, ATF) from the reservoir but the lines and pistons still had significant water. It was looking to be expensive (and a lot of work) to swap all the fluid when I hit upon an idea, could we boil the fluid to drive the water out? Thus began the saga of the weirdest thing I'd ever done with a Coleman stove:

In the post script we actually pulled and replaced the fluid 3 or 4 times, we'd draw the fluid out, boil off the water, let it cool, put it back in the machine and let it cycle for awhile and then repeat. Actually to be 100% honest we had 2 sets of fluid so I could be boiling off water while another batch was picking up water. This seems to have cured the issue, we also pulled the filter out of the fluid and actually submerged it in boiling fluid to get the water out of it, I think that helped a lot, I suspect water had gotten trapped in the filter and was being slowly released back into the dried fluid.

Chris and Harold, meanwhile, had both had trouble with tracks on the Northern and Southern Tuckers. I guess I haven't mentioned the Tuckers. When most people think "Snow-Cat" they're thinking of a "Tucker Sno-Cat". The club owns two, here's a terrible picture of the Northern Tucker.

I've heard a Tucker called "Farm equipment with delusions of grandeur. As near as I can tell its a 1 ton, rear engine pickup with tracks. They make several variations for personnel carriers but ours is the common type, its bigger than my ASV but smaller than the Pisten Bully. Power comes from a Cummins 4BT, the drivetrain is an automatic transmission with essentially 2 rear axles, the front axle pivots to steer.
I don't have much experience with them but so far the weak point seems to be the tracks, we replace/repair a lot of tracks on our Tuckers, like 2-3 a year.

Anyway with Ben, Chris and Harold all having troubles I was pretty pleased to get to the end of the season having zero breakdowns and feeling pretty smug, sadly that smile would get wiped off my face all too soon.

A Groomer operator?

I went back and fixed almost 3 years of pictures, did you realize the blog is now almost 10 years old? I didn't...

Anyway something new and really the answer to why I haven't done much snowmobile stuff. You might remember back in 2015 when I was "Working with the Groomers" well last January Ben gave me a call "Can you get that ASV to start?" what a loaded question, remember I'd been in the ASV once, 2 years before. I gave him a "maybe" and headed over. 

We'd had some good snow and of course somebody had decided to replace the batteries in the machine but hadn't installed them. I plugged in the block heater and got to work on the batteries. 

Actually before I talk about the batteries let me mention the block heater. I'd been told a couple times it didn't work but I'm one of those "well let me try it" kind of guys. One thing I noticed is that the outlet we were using was GFI protected so I made sure it was set to on using my heat gun. Then after I plugged in the heater I wondered "How will I know if its working?" A couple years ago I'd tested it with a Kill-A-Watt meter but I seem to have lost that. On this day I used my infrared thermometer.

It was 6F outside, I figured if the block heater was 93F it had to be working. These days I just touch it, when its warm to the touch I know its good.

It is of course way more fun (sarcasm!) to repair something you didn't take apart so it took me considerable time to get the batteries in

You can see my heat gun in the foreground, that was the next step, I stuck it in air cleaner and waited until that was good and hot. It was really cold out and Ben was scared that I'd ruin the brand new batteries so I wanted to be sure this thing was going to start. A few minutes later I texted Ben

"We're in business."

And thats the story of how I became a groomer operator. It really how my life has generally worked, I'm usually the guy at the place that can do the thing. In this case my experience with driving (and starting) old Mercedes diesels was exactly what was required. The engine in the ASV isn't anything like an old Mercedes but the principle is the same and I knew I needed to get it warm to get it to start...

Anyway I don't want this to become a groomer blog but its closer to snowmobiles than anything else I've been doing and I don't want the blog to die from lack of content. Hopefully I'll find time to get the sleds out this year, in the meantime I hope this is good enough.

Odds and ends

I feel sorry for how few posts I put on here, there really hasn't been much to talk about.

So lets go back, during the short couple weeks we actually had snow I did get in a couple rides. First was the abortive ride when the '91 Jag was leaking gas. On that one we took a ride through an area where the trail passes through a deep cut in rock. Its old railroad line and a really cool spot. I got a picture there back in 2015:

What you can't really see in the picture is that right in front of the sled is a pipe or knee wall of some sort. When theres lots of snow you can ride right over and not know its there, with only 14" when we rode over there was a looong drop on the back side. I got the '91 up onto the bump and gently slid it over. I rode ahead a little and looked back, I saw the skis as Angie came over and thought she had it under control. In reality what happened is she grabbed a handful of throttle and stood the '98 Jag right up. When she landed she went over the windshield. She wasn't seriously hurt but got banged up and of course was really upset with me for "riding off without me". In reality I was gone for maybe 4-5 minutes, I looped around and back back behind her but she'd already ridden off. *sigh* lesson learned, look back more often.

There was enough snow for those two weeks that we groomed 3 times. I got more seat time than ever before but I don't think I did particularly well. I'm starting to tap the drag on posts as I go through and need to go slower and be more careful. I also haven't been utilizing the drag enough, I hadn't realized what an art there is to that. There needs to be enough snow in the drag to fill the bumps in the trail but not so much snow that the machine can't pull it. Also if theres too much snow in the drag it'll spill over the sides leaving boulders in the trail. The last time we groomed I rode with Chris, he works crazy hours and let me drive when he got tired. He promptly fell asleep and I made it my goal to run smoothly enough that he'd stay asleep. A goal like that helps me to become a better operator...

The last ride I took the 98 and went out on my own:

The '98 is a much more comfortable machine than the '91 at the cost of some speed. On the long straights the '91 maxes out at about 70mph, the '98 will only make around 60. Same 440 engine but the '91 is a little smaller/lighter and has dual carbs.
I think this summer I want to find a Z skid and track to put under the '91, with better suspension it'd be a sweet machine.

Working with the groomers

Suddenly I realize I've been remiss in telling you about riding with the groomer...

As with all clubs the Coldbrook Snowmobile Club is basically run by a small group of people who do all the work. I've seen this a bunch of times in a bunch of different clubs. Not wanting to be a freeloader some years ago the last time I was part of the club I got in on a work day and helped prep one of the groomers. That was kind of cool but just a one time thing.

This year I thought I'd help out with the actual process of grooming. Technology has progressed and the club has a Facebook page, I got on there and found that they were looking for people to help out so I volunteered. Last week I met up with Chris and rode in the ASV on the southern run. Last night I rode with Ben in the Pisten Bully in Lake Dennison State Park.

The ASV is a fair sized machine, maybe the size of a family sedan, the Pisten Bully (pictured above) is a brute the size of a box truck. The blade is about eight feet across and its sports a 200HP Mercedes turbo diesel engine. The guys say that grooming is "like watching paint dry" which is more or less true. Its a bit like snowmobiling very slowly, the machines creep along at about 6mph. Its also a bit like plowing snow but backwards. Where your average snowplow pushes snow off the road the groomer's job is to pull snow into the trail, both to fill in the low spots but also to build up a base.

Here's some of Ben's handy work, even after half a day of riding it still looks real good.

I don't know yet if this is going to end up with me actually being a groomer driver. I'd guess I'll be a backup, it seems like they've got enough actual operators right now. It also takes a long time to get qualified to operate a machine, about 2 years. The reason for the long training period is that the groomers only really run about 100 hours a year which if you think about it is really only 2 and a half 40 hour weeks, it takes time to get proficient. Honestly I could probably run either of the machines through the woods right now and keep the drag on the ground but theres so much more to it, theres knowing how to fill holes, which high spots to cut and when to leave them alone. How to raise the drag before the top of a hill so you don't scrape the snow off and when to drop it on the back side. 

Ben is a great teacher and I started to absorb some basic theory last night but clearly I've got a long way to go. I've also got to learn to deal with problems that show up, the machines are generally pretty old and stuff breaks so you've got to be self-reliant. I'd like to think I've got an advantage there but I bet I really don't. These guys are mostly blue-collar folks who have real jobs where they work with their hands and tackle mechanical problems all the time. Being a "thinker" I'm way behind on that front and have to work harder to make up for it.

Anyway I don't know where this is going to lead other than to some late nights, last night I met Ben at around 6pm and headed home around 12:30am which was better than the week before when I met Chris at 6:30pm and headed home at 2am...