Cyclones!!!

[400brian]

The group for the trip would be Gary and Renee' on their late model Pantera, and Carlton on a rented 2023 600 SkiDoo. There had been some concern about slush on the lake, but there were sleds running all over it, so we ventured out across the northern edge then turned south along the eastern shore. Katy was on the Cyclone, this was to be her ride, so she might as well get used to it. I followed behind her bringing up the rear keeping a close eye on her and the sled.

We were running on crusty snow due to rain the week before. Conditions were reasonably smooth, but with the flat light conditions we had, it was hard to see any ruts or other hazards. Katy was a bit intimidated by the larger frame Cyclone even though she had ridden Wade Bennett's 340/S and his 78 Liquifire over the years. She was setting the pace at 20 - 25 mph.

We arrived at the Root Cellar and got the sleds parked. After all these years I still haven't got her trained to park the way I want her to...
We got inside, got a table, and got some bar food ordered!

[400brian]

Katy and I always seem to get picked out as the owners of the vintage Deeres. Probable the vintage clothes give us away. Several people in the dining room struck up a conversation about what we were riding. This began a pattern for the entire trip.

After a good burger and fries, we headed out to begin our return trip. We decided to run the ground trail back to the north. Again we ran about 25 mph. The trail was not particularly smooth, but I have seen far worse. The trail took us back to the east side of town where we jumped back on the lake and zipped west to our house.

When we arrived, I drove the Cyclone under the carport to check things out. As soon as I lifted the hood my heart sank, there was black goo everywhere! I got some paper towels and started cleaning things up. The worst area was the belt guard. The top was covered, and after I cleaned it off and flipped it up, I found the underside was just as bad! I had a good flashlight, and I started to take a good look at things. The back side of the primary clutch was clean, it just wasn't apparent where the goo was coming from.

The engine was started to see if that would reveal the source, and it immediately did! The fuel line from the pump to the carb had made contact with the secondary sheave and worn a hole through. Fuel was spraying everywhere! OK, this was not a problem. The line was long enough I could cut off the damaged portion and still reattach the line. A zip tie was added to prevent a reoccurrence of the issue, I shut the hood and took it out for a test rip. Everything felt good! I went up and down the driveway a couple of times, then shot out onto the lake to turn around and bring the sled back into the trailer. Unfortunately the sled died before I made it to the trailer...out of gas. I had to make the walk of shame to grab the gas can out of the trailer.

[400brian]

Wednesday was the day for our most ambitious plans, and the reason we supposedly came up here in the first place. The mission was to ride north of Bergland to Silver City, then turn and head west into the Porcupine Mountains and visit the Lake of the Clouds. I was roughly estimating this to be an 80 mile round trip. Katy has done rides of this length before, I was just hoping the sled would be up to the challenge.

One question I had was if we could get fuel in Silver City. Wade Bennett told me we could at the AmericInn Motel. I called up there Wednesday morning to confirm, and was relieved to be told they had Premium at the pump.

We headed north from our rental house, found trail 1, and started pounding out the miles. The trail was very nice at 10 am, and as I followed Katy I was surprised to see the speed creeping up over 30, then 35, then 40! The trail was so nice I was riding with one hand much of the time, but still! At a quick stop Gary mentioned that Katy was really hauling it, I replied, shhh, don't mention it to her. We met a few other sleds, and a few ran through us, but for the most part, observed traffic was light.

Silver City isn't much. The AmericInn Motel was the most noticeable business I saw, and is right on the shore of Lake Superior. The pump was right out front as advertised, and we slid in for fuel. The Cyclone took 4 gallons, the X8 2 gallons. Wasn't cheap, $5 per gallon, and you had to give your credit card before pumping.

As we were fueling, a fuel truck pulled in to refill the tank, the driver came over to look at the sleds and tell me about his collection of vintage Polaris stuff. Like I said, this happened all day.

[400brian]

After leaving the gas stop, we headed straight west along the lake shore. Superior was not frozen over, but there were ice chunks floating in the water, and large sections of ice were folded into tepees along the edge.

[400brian]

As we left Silver City I noted a road sign indicating it was 8 miles to the Lake of the Clouds. We zipped down the shoulder of the road for a bit, then jumped into the woods and found some of the nastiest trail I have ever ridden on. Endless rollers, several mud holes, absolutely brutal riding. Thankfully that didn't last long and we were back running the road shoulder.

We eventually came to a ski hill, then the entrance into the State Park. The road inside the park was smooth, wide, and straight as a string! We wound them up to Katy's happy speed and made tracks! Eventually we started up a series of "S" turns climbing up the ridge. We soon popped out into a parking lot and we were there! OK, where is this lake?

It turns out you have to climb a path up a significant tree covered hill ( ON FOOT !) only then can you see what you came to see. As we were getting ready to play mountain goat, a group of guys from Ohio rode up and started chatting us up about the Deere sleds. Eventually asking us to pose with the sleds for pictures. This is where the other members of our group started losing it!

I climbed up the hill and have photos to prove it.

[400brian]

Once we had the photos taken, we got back down the hill to the sleds, waved goodbye to our groupies, wowed them with the electric start, and headed back down the ridge. If a person was so inclined, you could really get a sled singing heading down that long straight grade. I believe Carlton said he saw 86 mph ( on his rental ). The two modern sleds disappeared out of sight, leaving us to our own devices.

I was sure they would run the road all the way back to Silver City, so we did as well, and that was a LOT more fun. Katy hadn't found the rollers and potholes entertaining at all. So we zipped back to the motel and found our riding buddy's standing in the parking lot. We had agreed before we had left the park we would have lunch at the motel, so we went in and did just that.

We were doing really good on time, although the switching back and forth between eastern and central time up here keeps us confused. As we were heading out to re-fuel for the run to home base, the lunch crowd at the bar started chatting with us about the Deere sleds and gear we were wearing.

At the pump once more the Cyclone took 3 gallons and the X8 1 gallon. It is very obvious at this point that I have gathered some data! The general poochieness of the sled, the smoke coming out of it, and the black spark plugs were all in agreement...the Cyclone is running way too rich!

We saddled up and headed south. The ride south was not nearly as nice as the trip north a few hours ago. The 35 degree temps were not helping as things were getting a bit mushy, and the corners were getting rough. I was having to lift off the gas at times as I was getting beat up and suffering from blurred vision. It was then that I noticed the wife pulling ahead of me. Apparently that wider ski stance and 78 suspension was doing something! That was gratifying to see.

We were back at the house by 3:30 and took a few pics to commemorate the event.

What a great couple of days. We had had a great time with old friends and new. The sleds had went back into the trailer in running condition, and I now knew what I had to do to get the Cyclone dialed in.

[AirborneX4Special]

Great reading as always and the pictures obviously help complete the story. Interest in old Deere sleds out in the wild, running as intended never seems to wane and serves as motivation for the hobby to continue. Your description near the end of the ride report of the mid mount versus front engine designs in tough conditions along with the picture of the two generations of Deere parked side by side rekindled my suspicions that had the front engine system been adopted from the beginning things would have been different.

[nick80lf]

Great story Brian. I have had similar experiences with groupies (never went as far as taking photos of me though). One memorable experience happened a few years ago, my brother and I were riding near Munising MI. We stopped to look at a trail map and 2 guys on new Arctic Cats did a brake check, then walked over to chat about the sleds. The old Deere's seem to be quite the conversation starter when they are seen in the wild.

[JDGuy]

Thanks Brian. Its a lot different today than it was some 45+ years ago when some other brand riders would ask "Where did you unhook and leave the plow at", LOL

[AirborneX4Special]

The plow jokes started to fade away when the 295/S made some people eat snow dust and then the 340/S appeared on the scene.

[400brian]

In the ongoing saga of the 76 Cyclone refresh…

We took the sled up to Bergland, MI in January to get into some better testing conditions, and rode up to Lake of the Clouds. The sled didn’t perform any better after it was up to full operating temp, and a couple tanks of gas ran through it.

I felt I was seeing two different issues, and I was trying to sus out what exactly was going on. The plugs were running black, the sled was smoking, and the low end throttle response was terrible. Classic symptoms of running rich, but the carb had the factory jets sizes in it. Also, the sled topped out at about 40-45 mph, and it just didn’t give you the feeling it wanted to go faster. The rpms were 7k plus, which I felt was excessive.

So when I got home I dug through the Cyclone parts box, and pulled out the first carb I laid my hands on. It appeared to be a 77 carb as it had dual vent tubes on it. It was very clean looking and had a black and yellow PN sticker on it. I took it back to the garage and proceeded to disassemble it. The part number sticker did not have a number on it, when I wiped it cleanI saw that it said Cyclone on it, not at all what I expected. After removing the enrichener plunger, I was pleasantly surprised to see a like new plunger and a very clean smooth orifice in the bottom of the bore. This seemed like a win.

After looking through the parts book, it appeared the main differences between the 76 and 77 carb was a different slide, bigger main jetting, and no air jet in the throat of the 77. The carb body itself had the same part number. One thing I noticed when I took the fuel bowl off was that the float arm was installed upside down. This meant that it hung nowhere near the level position it is supposed to.

I cleaned the carb, replaced the solidly plugged 20 pilot jet with a new one, ,installed the float arm correctly ( there are no marks on it indicating it had ever been installed correctly ), put a new 76 correct 370 main jet in, and put new vent tubes on.

I installed it back on the sled using the original slide that was connected to the throttle cable, put the fuel line on, then spent way too much time wrestling the air box boot onto the thing. I fired it up and got the slide stop screwed in enough so that it would idle, blipped the throttle a few times, and decided it seemed like an improvement.

Before I took it out for a test rip, I was looking things over a bit when I noticed something…

[400brian]

Yeah, I noticed this strange groove worn in the drive belt that had only 100 miles on it! This needed to be investigated, so I removed the belt and the problem was immediately apparent.
The duralon bushing in the moveable sheave had relocated itself. This meant the clutch was coming off!

Once it was on the bench I disassembled the clutch, and honestly that out of place bushing was the only thing that was readily apparent. So this clutch can probably be repaired if the snap ring groove isn’t messed up inside the sheave. But not tonight, no time to mess with it now, I figured I had two or three other clutches on 340 engines that I could liberate.

I grabbed the clutch puller, my cordless impact, a couple of sockets, and went on a clutch mission. Everything went good, and I had a 76 and a 77 102-C Comet clutch in the truck and headed back to the garage.

These two clutches are set up a bit differently according to the parts book. Different arms and spring. The 76 has a can on it, the 77 is open. The rollers were shiney on the 77, and the fixed shaft wasn’t horribly rusted. The cover bolts on these are Loctited on, and I didn’t have my propane torch at hand, so the 77 was going on.

I cleaned up the sheave faces, and removed the worst of the rust on the fixed shaft. Lubricated the arms and rollers, cleaned the bore and the crank stub, and it was ready to go on. I cleaned some of the belt dust out of the pan, I had spent quite a bit of time cleaning this thing last summer, already it doesn't look much like it.

I sat and looked at the thing for a bit, finally decided it was now or never. First thing that was different; I had to choke it to get it to start, and had to flip the lever a couple of times before it settled down and idled. I ran it out the door and let it idle while I got some gloves on. I jumped on, squeezed the throttle, and got underway. So far so good, throttle response was much improved. I rode around a bit to warm it up, then finally squeezed for effect.

My, My, My! I have a totally different machine. Put it to the bar and the speedo is heading for 60 mph right now! Our snow conditions are better now than in January, but not by much. The trail is thin and rough. Also they are closing the county trail system in the morning due to coming warmer weather.

The performance improvement is putting a smile on my face! I watched the tach and saw the rpms staying in the 6k range, the clutching is actually working now. I am not suggesting that it’s pulling the skis off the the ground, or is totally optimal, but it is now very driveable

I ran it back to the garage and took a look at the plugs. Both plugs looked the same, a medium tan color. Probably OK, but I will admit I run my mid-mounts with the Walbros more of a chocolate brown. I have a new 380 main jet I could try.

Progress has been made! It never ends with 50 year old sleds, there is always something to mess with if you want to put some miles on them.

[400brian]

Rainville sent me memo M77 - 50B from Deere dated 3- 24-77; Clutch parts improve performance 55001 - 70000 440 snowmobiles.

In this memo, it is saying that to improve performance and reduce fuel consumption on your 76 Cyclone 440, you should replace the arms and spring in the clutch to what was used in 77.

The 77 340 ran the same clutch set up as the 440. The difference I see is that the 340 ran a 38 degree cam in the secondary in both 76 and 77, while in 77 the 440 went to a 44 degree.

So, by installing this 77 clutch on my Cyclone I have updated to the full 77 340 model specs.

[400brian]

So Katy rode the Cyclone around 100 miles in the UP, 35 more in St Germain, WI at the RWTC, and a few more here locally. The clutch and carb changes were huge improvements! I would like to think the sled is set to be a reliable rider for her for years to come. It appears she is feeling more confident riding the Cyclone than she ever was riding the mid-mounts, so I feel the build is a success!

I have a 78 Liquifire 440 that I acquired back around 2009 that is next into the garage.