Schedule for weekend 12/18 - 12/20

Grooming will take place on Friday. Please meet at the warming hut at 9:00. Crew: Paul, Jim, Ray?, John L. Alternates: John Ericson and John Gillespie. Jim will bring up the fuel. We are going to have a problem with multiple Johns!


Dave: Everything should be good to go for Thursday, with adequate fuel in all the machines.

Paul, John L, and John Gillespie went over to Mt. Haggin today (Wednesday) to work on the Beast and give John G a tour of our system. He is a member of the Wise River Jackpine Savages and grooms snowmobile trails in the upper Wise River drainage using the twin to our Beast. We worked on the secondary clutch, removing shims to increase the slack on the drive belt at idle in order to make shifting easier and reduce wear on the belt. After our tour Paul said he thought the mod had worked!

John G enjoyed the outing and wants to help out as a backup groomer. He’s an old hand with Beasts, SWT Scandics, Alpine II’s so he’ll fit right in. It should be good for PR too.

I had forgotten to mention that I had to do bypass surgery on the brake cable on #3 during fall maintenance. The Alpine II’s have a Y cable with a single link from the brake handle that splits into individual links to disc brakes on the input and output shaft of the transmission. The input side link had been ground off from wear. Since we had no spares and replacements are no longer available, I made a clean cut in the cable and housing on the input side and then reversed things so the good link went to the input side. The input brake is important, because it enables static shifting without grinding the gears.

Anyway, my fix wasn’t perfect, and the Y junction can jam, leaving the input brake locked, as Gus discovered. By working the brake lever, you can free up the jam. When I have a chance, I will try to remove the useless stub cable from the Y and maybe fill the Y cartridge with epoxy or foil so the good cable end can’t move and cause the jam. In the mean time, just be careful shifting #3 and make sure it rolls away smoothly. Otherwise, let up on the gas, and work the brake lever a couple of times, and try again.

Would everyone scheduled to groom on Friday please acknowledge with a ‘COMMENT’?