Vintage Snowmobile Electric Conversion! Part 3: Restoration
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- There is some magic in the act of restoration.
You take something that starts off as old, rusty, broken.
You take it apart, and look at it closely.
You try to, as Rick Ruben puts it,
"see past the ordinary and mundane and get to what might otherwise be invisible."
You remove what isn't necessary, and you give it what is missing.
And you wash, scrub, mend, massage, and put it back together
With love, and care, and elbow grease,
And then, it becomes something new, useful, beautiful.
It has new life. It is restored.
And make sure you use a lot of elbow grease.
Like, A LOT.
Like get it all over everything and make a BIG. GREASY. MESS.
* * *
This is part three of a series. In this episode, I will be restoring the back half of the snowmobile including the track, suspension, bogey wheels and axles, and then reassembling everything and testing it out with the electric motor!
The sled is a 1974 Mercury 440 M/X found in a scrap yard.
Stay tuned for part four! In the next episode I will take it for a longer, proper test ride, document some stats, and start thinking about further improvements.
Don't forget to like, comment and subscribe. Thanks for watching!
#snowmobile #electric #restoration #vintage #electricvehiclesarethefuture #watchmikework
Looking forward to part 4
nice work! im stoked this is working!
Thanks! The best part is testing it out with my kids.. My 3-year old loves it!! Lots more improvements to come, I hope to post part 4 soon!
So impressive. Great video ! Can't wait to try it!❤ by pieco
Epic! I've got a couple old dead sleds that I would love to do this to.
Any updates? How is the range and speed? How long does it take to get a full charge on your batteries?
Thanks!
Z
SOOoooo. It's been a couple weeks. What are you seeing for range, speed, any issues. Have you freighted a dog sled and taken the electric sled ice fishing yet? I want to start a electric sled project. I would love any feedback.
Thanks for the comment! The short answer is the motor is fairly undersized for this build (obviously!) And the gear ratio makes it go pretty slow. I'd like to upgrade the motor and batteries in the near future, and I'll also be posting a part 4 with more details on my test results. Haven't taken it ice fishing yet (but hopefully soon!) But I have taken my kids around on it and they LOVE it. Thanks for watching and good luck with your build!
This is inspiring especially for the great White North!
How did you learn how this works😊 how to take this complex puzzle apart, restore it and put it back together, piece
by piece. KEEP GOING MIKE.!
❤❤❤
Thank you for the kind words! I knew very little about how snowmobiles worked before starting this project. But I do know a lot about bicycles, motorcycles and boats, and a snowmobile is kind of like a combination of all these things. I also know a fair bit about small engines, and have taken apart (and put back together) a good number of machines in my life.
I was actually able to find the original service manual from 1974 (50 years ago!) online, on a site called vintagesled.com . This gave me a lot of info on where and how to start taking it apart, what all the parts were called, and from there it was just a matter of observing the puzzle and learning as I go. As you can probably tell, I get tremendous joy from working on complex mechanical puzzles like this. Particularly when they are old and rusty ♥