Packers29 wrote:The interesting part is all other known liquifires with ifs were 82 liquifire chassis this looks earlier.
Aren't you forgetting about the two IFS Lf's with 81 chassis photographed at Yellowstone? There's also a photo floating around of an IFS sled with silver Sportfire hood too.
These ""teaser" pics are also new to me and very interesting. We may never know how many IFS sleds were actually made.
You can see in the last photo a coil over shock on the forward arm, and a rearward shock much like todays technology. Way ahead of their time. Yes we do in fact show a chrome bumper in this better picture, but now we need to see more of the sled please...Rob.
That's a different skid design than the one on the IFS Liquifire currently resting at the HOF. It has black hyfax, no rub caps on the front end of the rails, and the hood strap system is different than a stock Sportfire. Sure looks like the pictures are the same genre as the Horicon proto pictures I've seen. There is a picture of an IFS Sportfire in action but it's silver. The decal pattern on this machine looks the same as 1980 production sleds. They already had at least one prototype IFS sled in 1979, perhaps this is it....or one of them.
Fan cooled engine, 102c primary clutch, and Trailfire/ Sportfire style front bumper. Sportfire was slated to go TSS aswell. Very cool and thank you for sharing. Makes one wonder who had the TSS suspension on the books first, John Deere or Yamaha? Coinsidental, maybe?
The Sportfire platform may have been used as the initial IFS proto machine. Liquid cooled sled at Waconia and now at HOF has a Sportfire front end but different front and rear suspension systems.
How and where did you acquire these pictures? Do you have any view of the hood?
Packers29 wrote:The interesting part is all other known liquifires with ifs were 82 liquifire chassis this looks earlier.
Aren't you forgetting about the two IFS Lf's with 81 chassis photographed at Yellowstone? There's also a photo floating around of an IFS sled with silver Sportfire hood too.
These ""teaser" pics are also new to me and very interesting. We may never know how many IFS sleds were actually made.
That is what I'm referring to those two sleds have a 82 tunnel and a 81 hood.
The so called Yellowstone pictures have several prototypes, two "Liqufires", a "Sportfire" with a leaf spring front end but a wheel kit on the skid, and a "Sprintfire" with a gauge pod on the handlebars. All appear in 1981 livery with the exception of the Sprint that is always behind another sled in the pictures, so the decals aren't visible. The other interesting piece is the black tunnel Liquifire in the picture near the buildings, but it is also obscured by other sleds along with the gauge pod Sprintfire. Several other sleds are under cover in the background near the buildings, one of which appears to be a motel. I would suggest Deere had yearly iterations of prototype IFS sleds as evidenced by the pictures available and it would make perfect sense to decal them in period correct schemes so as to make them as nondescript as possible.
AirborneX4Special wrote:The Sportfire platform may have been used as the initial IFS proto machine. Liquid cooled sled at Waconia and now at HOF has a Sportfire front end but different front and rear suspension systems.
How and where did you acquire these pictures? Do you have any view of the hood?
I wish I had the originals, but I had to settle for taking snapshots of the originals. I was shown these by a friend of a friend of a friend, whose relative was a Deere sled engineer... one of those deals.
Matt - JDsleds.com Administrator
