Search results

Hopefully some of the same group as last year and maybe a couple of additions. Might sneak in a few miles on the "new" 12 year-old stuff too.

Still riveting....235 rivets in, about 215 to go. Heckler and Dan, here's a better shot of the Yamaha the guy had for sale. He put it out there for $400 and it went fast. Looks like a pretty decent sled.

Taken tonight on, of all places, the Sunset Channel, Lake of the Woods.

Incredible shots! If you're having a stressful day, I highly recommend this thread. For some reason, the song title "Fire Lake" always comes to mind when I look at this photo.

You're always welcome but be prepared to be bored stiff with vintage sled talk. I think that just a case would get you a personal tour and a T-shirt. I believe Mezz mentioned this as well but Chaparral is credited with coming up with the first IFS, like the one on the sled in the photo. And...

Love these threads! Lake of the Woods during the Canadian fires a couple of years ago. Kind of eerie.

Heckler is spot-on when it comes to availability. In the late 90’s you could pick this stuff up for peanuts, or even free but of course, I wasn’t smart enough to take advantage of that then. Now the guys that know what they have price them accordingly. On flip side, there’s probably stuff...

Well, it's the least I could do :). Some might think $800 is a lot of money for a rusting hulk but if it's a hard-to-find model you want and you can see the potential, I think it's worth it. I once ponied up $1000 for this 72 650 SS carcass for those very reasons. It took almost 2 years but...

Very cool and a pretty ingenious idea, using the cylinder sleeve to control fuel flow. Makes one wonder how someone comes up with these ideas.

Thanks Brian! Fishing was excellent. The condition of this sled won’t require the level of teardown that has occurred on most projects but there are things to be done and I’ll try to include some better shots of how everything goes together. Sat out on the deck for a while tonight watching the...

I’ve been using this Devilbiss JGA-502 syphon feed gun off and on for over 50 years. At the time I bought it, it was considered one of the better guns available. I seem to recall I paid $125 for it in 1974, which was a lot of money when you weren’t making very much money. It’s kind of funny...

Whoa, tough crowd. In my defense, when you get a string of September days like this, you have to fish. The weather on this lake can turn bad in a hurry and when it turns bad, it turns really bad. Fishing aside, I did manage to check off sort of a milestone with the Chaparral paint. I wanted...

Awesome car! 429 makes it all business. They really don’t build them like the used to. Now it’s hard to believe that the average person could walk into a showroom and buy one of these, or even better, if you knew the quirks of available options, order a one-off version and have it built. I...

I agree with you on the size but we can’t legally get up into the eight-pound range in our region of the lake. If I can get something in the 28 – 29” length, which is in the 6.5 pound area, I’m happy. Fortunately, there are a lot of Northerns here in that size category. A couple of years ago, a...

That thinks the Northern Pike is the best tasting fish we can catch in the upper Midwest. This comes to mind because I fried up a large filet tonight and, as usual, it was excellent, light, and flakier than Walleye in my opinion. My preferred way of cooking them is pan frying in oil using a cast...

I have always thought it would be cool to be a shop teacher. I loved wood shop when I was in 9th grade but my parents wouldn’t let me take a second year. I made so much stuff they got tired of paying for wood. I still have the lamp out in my shop that I made 60+ years ago., P.S. I saw the GPX...

Yeah, Hermie, I can see where the ORVs wouldn’t really wouldn’t be adding to the dirt issue on the trails using railroad and gravel-based roads but you and Mezz make a good point about additional wear and tear on the trail. As difficult as it is to maintain a snow-covered trail, it would seem...

I guess the theme of this post is that you’re never too old to learn something. I’ve always assumed that the Chaparral pans, and later the hoods, were made of fiberglass because it looked and behaved like fiberglass. Even so, I was puzzled as to how they managed to get such an evenly finished...

I suppose I’m biased but I’m not alone in my opinion that Chaparral was one of the most, if not the most, innovative sled company of the era. Your observation is correct, they were very well-built sleds. The all aluminum chassis/frame was light and very strong and the use of other lightweight...

This is an interesting subject. It makes me think back to when snowmobile trails were just starting to expand and see heavier use. There was a lot of handwringing by environmentalists about the potential damage that the snowmobiles were doing to the flora and the mice habitat. While driving on...