Snagged the "Triplefire 500"

[JoeRainville]

Hi Guys,

Most of the history I have on this sled is verbal. I fully understand being sceptical, as I did not believe Kenny when he told me about the sled back in 2006.

I am working through the past owners to document the history of this sled. I have contacted the seller of the sled that JRC purchased it from orignally. That seller thought it was factory built, but he mistakenly thought it was Deere, and I would like to know where he got it from. I would like to find the exact year this sled was constructed, as that will help answer some of the questions.

I am also communicating with Aaron Johnson of Polaris, as he is a noted Polaris historian. Hard part is that most of the folks involved with the Deere take over have long since retired. However, looking back at that timefame, Polaris had a failed takeover attempt of Arctic Cat's sled line up around 82 or so, and I assume started to talk to Deere not long after that. So far Aaron can't find any details of the Deere purchase, but is still looking into it.

Rich tells me that the 85 Polaris built Deere's were to be carry over 84's, but come with Polaris power in 86. Intersting, but we can't even prove that since I can't find a copy of the dealer order forms. Polaris officially purchased Deere's sled line up in Feb of 84, the decision not to produce Deere sleds should have been made by later that spring. That means this sled would have to have been built before that call was made.

Good news is that so far, I can't disprove any of the stories on the sled either. I believe this custom sled was either built by Polaris, or commissioned by them. It may have been an 85 or 86 prototype, or just a dead end concept to silence the Deere dealers calling for a higher performance Liquifire. I hope this doesn't take too long to track down, but it did take me 2 years to verify the #7 Oster proto Cat CC racer for example.

No matter what the outcome, I will be straight up about it. At the very least I have a darn cool custom. If the storys I have are correct, at the very best I have a one off example of what Polaris could have done with the Deere line up. Since this is the most expensive vintage purchase in my collections, I hope to prove the later.

Thanks for all the compliments, comments and thoughts, keep them coming.

-Joe

[That Girl Racing]

I distincly remember being at the local Deere dealer reading the letter from Polaris concerning building the 85 Liquifire. In a nutshell it said if they had interest they would make them. If not.... well we know what happened. I really don't think they ever got past that point. I seem to remember Polaris saying it got only 50 or so "advance" orders. Rumour's flew around about the 85 Liquifire having the 550 Kawi but they were just rumours. I seem to remember a pic but can't recall what it looked like. Someone must still have that letter. Peter

[Horicon Joe]

Rainville I just want to help you get to the bottom of this as soon as possible so you don't have go through
the agony of waiting to find out what this is.
Talked again to Larry Swanson and Stan Hayes from John Deere last night. Both heavily involved to the very end. Both strongly fell that this sled had nothing what so ever to do with Deere and they would have never had someone build something old like this at that time. It made no sense to them.
Some gathered thoughts were:
1980 leaf spring with old motor in 85 trying to impress someone while IFS was already out?
It also has no halogen headlight, bench seat, miss matched tach speedometer combo etc …
No mention of a "Property of John Deere Horicon Works Engineering dept" tag.
Where would the value be in Polaris doing something like this at any time?
These are all just thoughts with no proof they are correct.

Joe …… I took this from VS site ….. could you help us by explaining the part about acquired from Deere engineering ….. I could research more on my end to help you.

"I don't blame you for you being a skeptic, but she is the real deal....Trust me, I would never have dropped cash like that on a regular custom. The rear skid even has a few improvements, being switched to a 3 idler set up. Yes, this sled was aquired from Deere engineering, and Polaris did commission the build."

Just trying to help here. One thing that could possibly shed some interesting light would be telling us the actual serial number?
Might have an answer for you today on the original owner!

I think there is an extreme outside chance someone built this for oval racing or something like that in 1981. The reason being there is a tether in the pictures I see. The explanation for the paint and serial number decal missing on the tunnel might be they were trying to portray it as a 1981 instead of a 1980 model to impress someone? I hope this all helps. Good luck and let me know if you
want to run the serial number. I hope it is real!

[400brian]

This is a bit reminiscent of all the speculation and conjecture about the IFS Liquifire ( we referred to it as the Wildfire back in the mid 2000's ).

Once we met Dick Teal and Ed Kruel up at the HOF in 2007, the whole mystery was solved in just a few minutes.

Just have to locate the right guy...

[JoeRainville]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for offering to run down the vin#. I called Cari tonight, and she sent me a text pic of it. The tag was polished off, but the stamped numbers are quite clear: J44L J 127327M. I find it funny the sides of the tunnel are polished like the 81-84 sleds, but the underside of the running boards are still black.

I believe this is just a production 1980 Liquifire chassis, nothing special or prototype about it that I can see. No property tags, or newer Deere parts on the sled. She has the stock round headlight, vacuume formed ABS dash, etc. The bench seat was added by Jon. Someone cut the hump off the stock seat and recovered it. Since it looked bad, (and he is well over 6' tall), Jon installed a Trailfire seat. I am going to switch it back to the sport seat.

Polaris parts include the motor, clutches, wiring and tach. Custom parts include the motor mounts, pipes, modified and relocated radiator and the triple rear idler set up. The drive clutch does look like the 85 and up open style vs. the early 80's closed one.

I was told by one of the former owners that Polaris aquired this sled from Deere engineering. Maybe we can prove or disprove that part of the story. The value in Polaris doing this to an otherwise stock Liquifire could be in testing how the well engineered Deere chassis responded to more power. But, they cut the heck out of the frame to fit the wide triple in there. It could have been a concept to show the Deere dealers they were going to upgrade the modest power of the Liquifire with their older Fuji triple since Polaris did not have a liquid twin in production yet.

I am told the Deere dealers were not happy with the hp levels of the production 440, so Polaris may have played off that. As noted, they now owned Deere's strut IFS and long travel rear suspension designs, but I doubt they would have put them into production against their sucessful Indy chassis. I assume they would have produced the Deere line up for a few years at most, maybe with Fuji motors, while convincing Deere dealers to move over to the regular Polaris line up. Too bad they paid for the right to build them but never did.

I don't think it was an oval sled, as the porting was stock back in 06. The track is studded, but only two studs per pitch. And it's really straight too, not beat up like I would think. Of course, the jugs and track and ski's could have been changed too.

I can tell you that any documentation from that era is hard to come by, minus the letters Deere sent to the dealers, and the one Polaris sent to Deere sled owners. Thanks for digging into this. I also hope we can prove she it the real deal, otherwise I own the most expensive 80 Liquifire out there...

-Joe

[JoeRainville]

Here is the pic of the VIN Cari sent today:

[WinnipegStPaul9]

Aside from this sled, I think the real reason Polaris wanted John Deere was because of the huge dealer network. Nothing more, nothing less. That said when it came time for Polaris to sign up dealers to sell the sleds there was one huge, major, glitch. TERMS!! The John Deere Company had/has? very lucrative terms for their dealers. Inventory could be held for __?_____months or ___?____year before payment was due. ( If any of you from the seventies/eighties can fill in the blanks please do so. ) As I can remember, Polaris had one term: Cash with perhaps a small floorplan program. JD dealers, not being used to such terms and not selling lot's of sleds pretty much said "no" thereby ending the John Deere snowmobile program. Anyone with information contrary to this information feel free to post it here.

DA

[Matt]

When I worked at the dealer in the early 2000s, yes Deere still had very good terms that allowed us to keep a substantial stock of lawn equipment before having to pay. I think it was a year or maybe even 2 years before they would start charging interest on unsold equipment.

[DinosaurDan]

Just a couple of thoughts from a Polaris guy- first off the secondary clutch has external belt height adjuster, this was not made until the early to mid 90's, so if this is a prototype from the 80's that would have been added later. The painted engine with highlighted heads,logos is not typical of polaris prototypes- no pretty parts on protos, just functional.I also agree with Norton on the triple pipe thing. I am also trying to figure out why polaris would want to make this sled,they already did- it was called a centurion and it was famous for crushing leaf springs with all that motor weight .It just doesnt seem logical that polaris would want to make something like this when they already were on top of the industry with the indy.Just a view from the polaris side.


Good Luck on your research Joe- Dan

[Horicon Joe]

Welcome new member Dan!

Great observations.

[Deerenuts]

BINGO! We have a winner!

[JoeRainville]

Dan,

Weclome to our site. Thank you for adding your obervations on the clutching. I could tell the approximate date of the drive, and the driven does look simular to the one on my Polaris Sport 400L ATV. Of course these could have been updated at any time, but they look like final production items at a glance.

Some thoughts as to why this could have been built. Polaris deffinately wanted access to the Deere dealer network, no doubt. Some did take on the Polaris line up after Deere sold the line up to them. I assume they were looking at their options to increase market share, as Yamaha was #1 after Cat folded. The Indy was on the upswing that lead Polaris to lead the market by the late 80's to early 90's, a crown they kept until the REV passed them.

This sled could have been for testing the waters, trying to build some enthusiasm for Polaris powered products at the dealer level, ect. I am told it was the only one built buy a pretty good scorce. No other sleds like this have surfaced, that is why I am working to track down it's origins.

Wanie, thanks for your help with taking to Stan and Larry. Any factory feed back is very welcome, as is anything you can find out on the serial number. Obsevations from the guys here is also appriciated, as I am no Polaris expert and can not answer specific questions as to why it has triple pipes vs. a fat single, (other than maybe a packaging, but a single should have been easier?!) or the motor color, ect. Hopefully we can find out who built it, when and why.

Nathan, your sarcasm is not useful, or constructive and I suggest you refrain from it.

Thanks guys,
-Joe Rainville

[Liquifried]

Cool sled. Regardless of the history and story, go and ride that puppy and enjoy it. You can't take it with ya when your gone!

DA you made the entire acquistion debacle make sense! I always wondered why they bought and killed the line. Lot of money to spend on buying market share. Not sure what % Deere had back in 83/84. The dealer network is a no brainer and would be attractive to co-brand or cross brand the sleds, eventually assuming the full name "The Polaris Liquifire, eventually making them Polaris sleds with JD decals sets. If dealers were getting delayed terms i.e. free cash and ability to collect on sales prior to paying Deere, who would want to put cash up front and sell inventory later or be stuck with old inventory for the next season and have to discount that. Especially during a recession. Polaris did not have the capital resources to be there own bank like Deere could do. I used to be in the capital medical equipment business for Abbott Laboratories and we would put six figure deals together over 36/60 months at 0% interest. We ate the competition for lunch because could not compete on 0% low monthly payments. The accounting side of this for dealers would be operating cost vs capital expenditure. All about the cash flow baby! To boot, other that brand recognition and the dealer network, the Fire Series Production sleds were far behind the technology that Yamaha and Polaris had with IFS, electronics and rear suspension with travel on the market vs what Deere may have had up their sleeve in R/D. There were a lot of Green Christmas' in the Midwest in the early 80's.

[WinnipegStPaul9]

Joseph stay on task, you have bigger issues to worry about than someone calling " BINGO".

[Danzig]

I thought the Wildfire was the sled for 1985.