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Evolution
of the snowmachine
Changes over
the years make machines more reliable, durable, faster
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A contestant in the 1998 Iron Dog Classic flies down the trail
out of Nome heading toward the finish line in Fairbanks. Because
of advancements in technology, an estimated 75 percent of
the racers now finish the gruelling event compared to only
50 percent who finished the race in the mid-1980s. (Photo
by JIM LAVRAKAS / Anchorage Daily News)
Justin Esmailka of Kaltag wears duct tape during the 1998
Iron Dog race for protection against the cold, which also
can take its toll on snowmachines. (Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage
Daily News)
Because of technological advances in the machines, competitors
in the Iron Dog snowmobile race say they now arrive in Fairbanks
feeling less beat up than they did upon arriving in Nome 10
years ago. (JIM LAVRAKAS / Anchorage Daily News)
Recreational snowmachiners cruise down the Susitna River on
a recent sunny March weekend. Modern sleds allow weekend warriors
to travel great distances without the worry of mechanical
woes that plagued the earlier generation of snowmobilers.
(RICHARD J. MURPHY / Anchorage Daily News)
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By CRAIG MEDRED
Daily News reporter
Thirty-seven-year-old Justin Esmailka of Kaltag can
well remember when the snowmobile came to the Yukon River village
and changed everything.
He was a 5- or 6-years-old, living in a world that each winter
slowed to the 5- to 10-mph pace of the average trapline dog team.
In those days, travel was an adventure, a slow adventure.
Going upriver 40 miles to Nulato was a two-day trip. Traveling
over the 90-mile Kaltag Portage to Unalakleet on the shore of the
Bering Sea was a journey seldom made.
When the snowmobile replaced the dog team, the distances started
to shrink. By the 1970s, Unalakleet was no longer a faraway outpost
for the people of Kaltag. The early snowmobile had brought it within
reach.
The modern snowmobile would eventually make the old, coastal Eskimo
village part of the neighborhood for the people living in the old,
riverside Athabaskan village.
"It used to be a full-day trip, maybe two days (in the 1970s),"
Esmailka said. "My average trip these days on an Indy 340 is two
hours, 15 minutes."
When the trail is rough, it might take him almost two and half
hours. When conditions are ideal, he can do it in an hour and a
half - less time than it takes someone in Anchorage to make the
127-mile weekend commute to Seward in a car.
The Polaris Indy 340 to which Esmailka refers is what would be
called an "entry level" machine in today's snowmobile market. Most
sleds today have bigger engines, making them more powerful and faster.
Many have better suspensions, making them easier and more comfortable
to ride.
All of them, however, share one thing in common with that Indy
340 - turn-the-key-and-go convenience.
"It's just like a car today," said 77-year-old David Johnson of
Minnesota, a pioneer in snowmobile design. 'The hassle is out of
snowmobiling. You just put in gas and oil and away you go."
Last month, Johnson joined brother-in-law and fellow snowmobile
inventor Edgar Hetteen, 79, on a 1,200-mile snowmobile ride from
Bethel to Fairbanks.
One of the villages they passed through was Kaltag. When Esmailka
was a child, visitors like this were rare. Even village-to-village
travel was limited.
No more. Esmailka now sees a regular flow of travelers through
Kaltag. Ninty-four-year-old adventurer Norman Vaughan, who has no
trouble riding a snowmobile though he can barely walk these days,
led his Serum Run tour to Nome through the village this year. Veteran
Iditarod musher Sonny Lindner and other travelers went through,
too, on their way from Fairbanks to watch the Iditarod finish.
And Johnson was there, on a trip to retrace the run Hetteen made
in 1960 in a last-ditch effort to prove the Polaris Sno-Traveler
of that time was a feasible product.
A good Bush mechanic, Hetteen managed to keep that 1960 Sno-Traveler
running for the 21 days it took to reach Fairbanks. It wasn't easy.
On the trail from Holy Cross to Anvik, a crankcase gasket started
leaking, and Edgar had to turn back. On the Yukon River, he had
to stop to replace a coil, then hit overflow and spent three hours
chipping ice out of the frozen track of the machine that couldn't
go fast enough to stay on top of the overflow.
Halfway through the trip, he had to stop and spend days servicing
the engine. On the trail to Minto, he burned an intake valve and
had to make repairs again.
Still, he made it, ushering in the era of snowmobile travel in
the Far North.
BUILDING A BETTER
MACHINE
For the next 20 years, the machines would slowly evolve, too, but
some of the same problems that confronted Hetteen on that first
journey would remain. The first requirement of Alaska snowmobile
travel into the 1980s was that you had to be good mechanic.
In fact, until the early 1990s, Jim Wilke of Anchorage's Alaska
Power Sports confesses he was nervous about selling snowmobiles
to people lacking in mechanical skills.
'You'd hope the guy just didn't have too much trouble with it,"
Wilke said. And there were plenty of ways to have problems.
Early drive belts regularly burned up. Spark plugs commonly fouled
due to excess oil in the mixture of gasoline and oil necessary to
lubricate the internal parts of a two-cycle engine. Springs broke
in suspension systems and wore out in clutches. Engines overheated
and blew if the oil-to-gas mixture was too lean. Cable-connected
caliper brakes similar to those used on bicycles broke under heavy
use. Cold-weather starts required a delicate feel for the use of
the choke and throttle.
Dedicated snowmobilers didn't mind wrestling with these mechanical
intricacies, but the skill required to get a snowmobile running
and, more importantly keep it running, put the machines out of the
reach of people who didn't know their choke from their throttle.
"Now," Wilke said, "they'll just start. You don't have to be a
rocket scientist. It's an amazing transformation."
The reasons for that shift are as simple as they are difficult
to pin down.
"It happened," Wilke said, 'because the snowmobile companies realized
that if they didn't do it they were going to be out of business."
MORE DURABLE, FASTER
As the number of snowmobile manufacturers shrunk from 50 or so
in the early 1970s to the four that remain today, there was a growing
recognition that the product had to be consumer friendly if it was
to succeed in the mainstream. Durability, reliability and convenience
were even more important than performance.
As early as 1971, Canada's Ski-Doo - one of the first major snowmobile
manufacturers - had built a sled capable of 120 mph. Almost 30 years
later, few sleds on the market can hit that speed.
That 1971 Ski-Doo, however, could only hit top speed on a tabletop
flat surface. It wouldn't have lasted longer than a few minutes
pounding along Alaska's rough trails.
The difference between that machine and those of today is not maximum
speed but in what might be called useable speed.
Early snowmobiles rode on boogie wheels much like tanks. Up front,
they had skis with leaf springs like trucks.
On rough trail, these machines bounced and bucked like wild animals.
High-speed travel on such trails was out of the question. Even moderate
speeds were difficult.
Then, in the 1970s, came slide-suspension systems that cushioned
the bumps while keeping the snowmobile's track spinning with maximum
efficiency. That did a lot to make the machines more rideable.
Independent front suspension systems of various forms - from torsion
bars to hydraulic dampened coil springs - arrived next, and they
did even more to improve the ride.
Johnson, the designer, credits these suspension systems with making
snowmobiles not only more comfortable but more durable and faster.
As the ride improved, so did the ability to cruise at higher speeds,
because the driver no longer took such a beating.
As the ride improved, so did overall durability, because the machine
no longer took such a beating. The average rider was able to spend
more and more time riding and less and less time making repairs.
The changes in suspension systems through the 1970s and 1980s were
subtle but real.
Competitors in the Iron Dog snowmobile race from Wasilla to Nome
to Fairbanks, a distance of more than 2,000 miles, say they now
arrive in Fairbanks feeling less beat up than they did upon arriving
in Nome 10 years ago.
The Iron Dog started as a one-way race from Nome to Wasilla in
1984. Sometimes less than half the field completed that trip because
of breakdowns. By 1993, however, snowmobile durability had improved
enough that race organizers took the race from Wasilla to Nome and
back.
Over the years since then, the number of machines starting and
finishing the race has steadily improved. In the early years, race
organizers figured they were doing good if half finished. Now, it's
more likely to be 75 percent.
Riders credit all sorts of improvements from better springs to
better chassis materials to better oil to better rubber for tracks
and drive belts.
The best machines now bounce along comfortably at 20-to-45 mph
on rough trail and can easily hit 80-to-90 mph on flat river surfaces.
Hydraulic brakes make it easier for good riders to use that speed,
too. They can fly across smooth surfaces, brake to slow for the
rough and then take off again on the flats.
The old caliper brakes, which worked by squeezing a drive wheel
much like the wheel on a bicycle, quickly burned out or froze up
when subjected to such use. Hydraulics coupled with improved materials
for brake pads solved that problem.
These kinds of small incremental changes - from the tip of the
modern snowmobiles plastic skies to the tail of its lightweight
aluminum chassis - have made the machines much more reliable and
at that same time they have boosted performance.
Designer Johnson noted that the shift from steel frames to aluminum
frames cut the weight of the average snowmobile 20 percent. That
significantly improved the power-to-weight ratio, making the machines
quicker to accelerate and quicker to stop.
But there were other small design changes over the years which,
collectively, were far bigger. Together they make the snowmobile
more and more like the automobile.
"It's not any one thing," Wilke said.
* Reporter Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.
©2000
Anchorage Daily News
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