JohnF

Couple of thoughts: 1. I would still get in touch with Tarion in case they'll do something. Don't assume that the time's up so you're outa luck. 2. Your insurance will likely only cover the damage, not the house repairs to stop the leaking. 3. Is it possible you've just got ice damming on the roof somewhere? JF

This is just the first step in going down the road to govt bailout of the rod industry. JF

Check around at some of the real old Skidoo dealers. It's amazing what they have hiding away on the parts shelves. Somebody who sold 'em years ago may know what part will work off another model too. Bombardier was terrible for assigning new part numbers to the same part for different models and you just had to know what worked. I was a local hero one year when the 440 TNT's were burning up hot side pistons really fast. I had gotten a tip from the boys in the racing dept when I was in Barrie for service school that they were gonna be a problem and that the best replacement was the 399 TNT piston. Worked like a charm and I had dozens in inventory when the replacement notice went out just after the first good snow. Our customers really saw the benefit of buying locally that year. Seems the piston part number for the 440 was backorderedand the other dealers didn't know about the interchangeable piston thing. The guys who'd saved $50 by going out of town to buy got pretty riled when we told 'em we'd be doing our own customers' sleds first. Several even went whining to Bombardier who finally told us we had an obligation to honour all warranty work. We told them it was no problem but our customers would all be done first. Barring finding the proper part, as Wayne has said, it's not hard to fabricate a new one. Those old Tillotsons had enough extra meat in them, at least the HD's, that you can drill and tap for a stopper clamp somewhere if you can't reuse the bracket that's on it now. JF

I thought y'all still had buttons. JF

I'm thinkin' there's a reason why they need the larger eye on a spinning rod, and turning it backwards seems counter-productive, unless they just plain screwed up on the placing of the eye and length of the first segment. Sounds like damage control to me, or just a cheesy marketing ploy. JF

Take more care with the drift bags? JF

Think of it as extra insulation. I spent half the day yesterday raking insulation off my mom's roof. Man, is that hard on the back. JF

It's us should be thanking you for the entertainment we've had with this. And that sux about the beer. I'll be sure to have a few extras for you over the holidays. I'm sure there are at least a few others here who'll volunteer as well. Take care of yerself, and get back to normal soon. JF

Sure. We've learned from the master: Go buy a fresh looking fish at the supermarket, take off yer shirt, pose for camera et voila - fishing report. JF

Yeah. What does Newfoundland know about fisheries anyway. Merry Christmas to you too, and happy essaying. JF

JF

I'm talking early early 70's, still living in the past. Guess I just can't give up the days of hair and girlfriends and motorized toys you could actually fix yerself without a computer. JF

Wow. I've heard a lot about a character named Canadave from Garry2rs. Is it possible you're the one, and is it possible you did all the stuff he says you did? JF

Do they still make those. There was a Valmont too. Don't remember what the difference was. JF

This is fun. I'd forgotten the Speedways. Fast. The Kalamazoo sleds were cool too, and the THUNDERJETS. They were an accident waiting to happen but fun to watch. Remember when Motoski brought the alcohol carbed free air sleds? And Villeneuve's twin trax? Did he ever get beaten when he finished the race, not that he finished many with those things? JF

My TNT's were bad for blowback. My yellow canary suit had a permanent oily belly. The cognoscenti knew which belts could be borrowed from other machines to subtley alter the clutching on Skidoos, and vice versa. If I remember correctly my Kohler powered Rupps ran better with the standard Skidoo belt, but it had to come from Gates or Dayco, I forget which now. It was fractionally wider or narrower (I forget which) and once you got the springs, ramps and dogs just right you got just a tad more response. I remember a night spent on Rice Lake with one of my dealers (who was into sled racing too) grinding weights and changing springs on some new Comet clutches until we got it just right. Then sending off the specs to the manufacturer to get a bulletin sent to the OSRF scrutineers in the morning so we could use the new clutch legally. . We thought we were pretty sophisticated when we started carrying a range of carb jets for the Mikunis. I don't think we really had a clue what we were doing but sometimes we just got lucky. I remember loaning one of my stock Rupps to a Polaris team driver for a marathon event cuz his had blown something. I warned him about the launch but he just did what he always did with his polarises and threw his weight back hard when the flag dropped. He got a little more traction than he expected and the sled went right up and over on it's back. One of the risks of having the clutch engage at about 5 grand I guess. Yeah. Those were the days. JF

JD built one nifty little 292 model (I'm pretty sure it wasn't a 340) that was pretty popular in the stock classes for a couple of years. The rest pretty much lived up to their tractor heritage, JF

Remember bolting on 1" spacers to drop the skis an inch and spread 'em a shackle width. Then we used to run a bead of horseshoe borium along the stock runners and grind it to an edge for steering control. And using the heaviest possible springs cranked up tight on the back axle so more weight was on the skis. The sled turned better but was a bear to steer sometimes, and the overstressed link springs on the back were forever blowing up. I carried spares on the trail. Changing them in the bush was slightly easier than replacing pistons in the snow. JF

Might be. I just remember there was one here in Stratford but I don't remember the brand. JF

For snowmobile nostalgia buffs http://www.ishof.com/php/antique_restorer.php JF

I second that. Jedi's attitude is one that a lot of folks could learn something from. That's what will bring us out the other end of this crap in one piece. JF

Don't sweat it. We're all affected somehow by this latest screwup. Natcherly nobody wants to wear the horns for it, but we're really all responsible, if only cuz we voted for the jackasses who brought us to this sorry state, whether they be corporate leaders (and in a way we even voted for them by buying the products and the stocks), union leaders (who may have done too good a job for their constituents, or perhaps were just smarter than their corporate counterparts), and we can't forget the politicians who led us all happily down this sorry path we've taken, blowing enuf smoke to convince us there's no day of reckoning, that we can have it all, etc., and finally ourselves for being self-indulgent suckers, following whomever made the most appealing promises even when we knew deep down it was all a crock of fishguts. It's a sensitive issue, and will prolly get worse before it gets better. Unless we all start to talk about it at work, at home, even here, it ain't gonna get better. Left to their own devices those leaders who put us in this mess will simply take us deeper into it. Time for us all to stand up and be counted. Eventually we may shame those leaders with a modicum of common sense at all the various levels to actually address the problems with the idea of solving them, not just sweeping them under the rug. Those who have taken offence at anything said in these threads about the auto industry etc need to take a deep breath, step back and look at the world without the rose coloured glasses or the tunnel vision. It's not just your own comfy lifestyle that's threatened at the moment. There is hardly a person in North America, and probably in the industrial world who isn't going to feel a little pain over the next while. I doubt there's anyone who can honestly claim not to be part of the problem, and those who do are either uninformed, unaware or just foolish. There won't likely be a resolution to this until everyone has tightened the belt a little bit, in some way. So Brian, don't feel bad about pointing out the obvious to us. You shouldn't need to have done it, but the reaction proves it needed doing, and will need more doing before it gets better. One could say this is the wrong forum for it but it's the biggest thing that's hit us in years and we'd be fools to ignore it. I say by addressing it, even with our limited understanding of what it's really about or why it happened, we're showing that we're more than just a bunch of shallow thinking fisherpersons. We're responsible members of a great society. Now we'll see if the message sinks in. The best of the season to your and yours. Let's all do our best to make it merry, for ourselves and those less fortunate. JF

Hah! Fergot CCW and Yamaha. And Kawi and Suzuki came a little later. Wish I had one of those Kalamazoo performance sleds today, or even my old Blizzard. JF

Burgundy? Now that's a blast from the past. I got into the snowmobile biz back in 1970 when there were about 72 (I think that was the count) brand names on the market. Granted a lot of them were just another company's sled with a different label on it, and occasionally a different engine. I can remember JLO's, Hirth, Rotax, Kohler for sure. Seems to me there was even a rotary engine somebody tried. Cat came along with their own branded engine at some point. Seems to me I'm forgetting a biggy. What was in the early Jets, Cats and Polaris sleds. Who remembers the twin trak (not the Skidoo or the Alouette Villeneuve raced in ProMod) or the articulating sled? Does anyone remember the one really good performance sled JD put out, or the only really kwik Mercury? Or the one thing Rupp learned from Mercury about performance? Or the best clutch that ever ran on a Rupp stock sled at Kawartha (there were actually only two of them and they were born on the ice of Rice Lake at midnight)? I miss those days. But I guess that's why I can't get excited about ice fishing. I spent way too many hours of my life freezing my cojones making sleds run faster so other guys could blow 'em up or park them on the roof of the horse barn at the fairgrounds in P'borough. Reminiscences-R-Us JF

Wasn't that Little Richard? JF