Horsepower? 2nd time around.

[mojodeere]

Hi Guys,

I know I asked this question back in June but I had a couple of different responses. I'm just trying to find out what the actual horsepower is on a 84 Sportfire & 84 Trailfire. I was told the Sport is 42 another guy said 48. And the 84 Trail was said to be 46.
Does anyone know for sure? I'd like to get it right cause I want to put it on display signs for sled shows.

Thanks for your help guys!
Morley.

[Matt]

The problem is the number wasn't published in the documentation. So any numbers you get from different sources and may or may not be correct. I always thought the Sport was around 42 and the Trail around 38. Since it wasn't published you could just leave that number off.

[sledhead16]

Matt I think your very close, seems that folks thought the sportfire should of been 50hp and was 8hp from perfect, indicating 42hp.

[JoeRainville]

Deere published a lot of horsepower numbers for the early CCW sleds, but held back in the Kawi era. It was pretty well known that the Kawi Liquifire was about 65 hp.

In 1980 Deere published that the Sportfire has 15% more power than the Trailfire, but being single carb 440cc fan cooled motors, but of different designs. The Trailfire was a low performance, but durable T-1 design with roots back to the 1971 Cats. The Sport was a medium performance T-7 design that had roots back to the 73 EXT and El Tigre motors. All T-7's shared a common base gaskets, just like the T-1's did. For example the Liqufire is also T-7 based as shared the wider cylinder spacing of of Fan and FA T-7's.

In 1984 SnowGoer reviewed the Sportfire, calling it "8 hp from perfect" as Allen quoted above. They state its a 42 hp motor, but I can't find anything from Deere to confirm that. Based on that fact that the sled barely outperforms a Trailfire, that claim seems reasonable. Both sleds share a chassis and both have 34 mm Mikui carbs, although the Sport does have the "Power Jet" version.

I hope this helps.
-Joe

[SS440-80]

Maybe I can help here...?

This is pictures from a broschyr for John Deere:s swedish lineup 1982. If you look at the second picture you can see that Sportfire 440 has 46,9Hp (34,5Kw), Trailfire LX 440 has 40,8Hp (30Kw) and Trailfire 340 has 31,3Hp (23Kw).







And I add pics and fact for Liquifire (59Hp) and Spitfire (28Hp).











Hope this was to some use.

[nick80lf]

That is awesome info

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

[JoeRainville]

Excellent and interesting info Robert! I would not have thought the Sport would have been that high...I stand firmly corrected on the Sportfire horsepower.

-Joe Rainville

[sledhead16]

And the Swedes got this info hahaha!

[sledhead16]

Hk is the same as hp, when you translate the kw it translates into hp which shows the same as your pictured hk. Thanks for sharing!

[mojodeere]

Well Guys, thanks again for all your input. And thank you Robert from Sweden! I have the exact same 82 brochure in English and it states nothing for h.p. so this is a big help! Very much appreciated!!

Morley.

[SS440-80]

I'm glad that I could help And that's what forums is all about

And the Swedes got this info hahaha!

A lot of things come from Sweden… real meatballs, Edgar Hetteens grandfather and of course Alfred Nobels DYNAMITE

[JDGuy]

Note the Liquifire is listed as 59HP. Anyone remember where the popular and perhaps assumed number of 65 came from?

Thanks Robert, it was very informative. Would you happen to have a HP number for the 440 Kawasaki Invader? That would be interesting to know in relation to the Liquifire which had lower compression and less initial spark advance than the Invader, as I recall?

[AirborneX4Special]

65 is legit, that is if you trust Mr. Stan Hayes.
At the time, only Skidoo spent a lot of time boasting about horsepower with their "Plus" product line nomenclature. I have no idea how much power the Yamaha SRX produced, but it was faster than anyone else.

[SS440-80]

I think that 65Hp is correct.
I just recalled that between 1980 and 1990 Sweden had a voluntary import stop for sleds over 60Hp, so many sleds in that area was just i little bit detuned to go below 60Hp.
There was some turbulence around snowmobile riding in Sweden in the late 70:s and many nature talibans wanted to forbid the snowmobile completely, so the dealers made a voluntary Hp import limit. Only sleds who was supposed to be in racing was with higher Hp, but they was not registered for traffic.
This import stop is one of the reason that Sweden has one off the most liberal snowmobiling laws in the world. We can drive almost everywhere, crossing over anyones land as long as it's not a nature reservation forbidden for motor traffic.
But that's also why we don't have many VMax540, Kawasaki Interceptor etc etc...

The Liquifire I guess was just a little bit detuned to get under 60Hp.



As for the Kawasaki Invader it say 67Hp on this website
http://www.torysvintagesleds.com/engine ... v.html/url


And the Yamaha SRX did not have the same Hp all year, this is what a Yamaha fanatic member on RetroSkoterForum writes:
1976 SRX340 65HP
1976 SRX440 91Hp
1977 SRX440 100Hp
1978 SRX440 85Hp
1979 SRX440 82Hp
1980 SRX440 80Hp
1981 SRX440 80Hp (Europe)
1981 SRX440 88Hp (North America)
1982 SRX500 105Hp. All sleds of this model was destroyed in North America, but in Scandinavia it still exist about 20 sleds.

[AirborneX4Special]

I recall a shootout from back in the day between the Invader and the Liquifire where the sleds were virtually identical in performance. It seems to me the Invader "won" a drag race only because the Liquifire was clutched for a standing start while the race was a rolling start, and the Invader was somehow clutched appropriately ahead of time. Inside baseball stuff from back in the day to be sure, as well as another piece of useless information I have retained.