80 Trailfire & 81 sportfire

[High Top]

Came across this pair and was able to get them bought. Electric start on both and appear to have good solid tracks. Hopefully not too much to get them running again. Looks to be a good fuel system cleaning and some carb work for sure. Crank seals will get done since I’ve got plenty of time till winter. First things first….. leaf blower to remove years of trash under the hood then into the shed for tear down.

[snowmoer]

They look in good shape. Have fun on getting them going.

[nick80lf]

Nice looking sleds. Be sure to keep us updated.

[High Top]

I decided to start with the sport as it looked like most everything was there and will take less work to get ready. The trail has some interesting things going on with tape, foreign switches/wiring on the handlebars.

I got the carb worked over. New jets, needle/seat, cleaned up. Put a kit in the fuel pump but not sure that it would have needed it. Hooked up battery and got it to fire up with an auxiliary fuel tank. Nice to know it runs and if I need to chase other problems while doing crank seals.

I had the idea that I want to be get my machines up on stands easily to work on them. The first time I did this was last winter and it was a crude operation but it made life much easier. I should probably just buy a lift but I’ve probably spent enough already on my fire collection for my wife’s liking so I went to the junk collection of metal to see if I might have pieces to make something…… and there appeared to be plenty. To the Band saw and welder and I’ve now got a setup that should work. Probably heavy enough to support a ford ranger but the price was right so who cares. The trusty A frame hoist was called into action. Tractor with forks works fine for me also but the A frame lets me have better control I feel.

Ok she’s up on stage one of the lift, about 2 feet off the ground. Stage two will put it to 40 inches, hopefully that will allow easier access to track and suspension stuff when needed.

Hood off now and engine pulled for seals and a few other items, pistons look good from intake/exaust manifolds. Note the extraordinary effort done by a pack rat! It looks bad and I cleaned a ton of stuff out already but I really don’t think it did too much damage other than a few wires.

[nick80lf]

My son made my lift as a 4H project. If your interested I can try to find the drawing we used.

[nick80lf]

Here's the page where we found the drawings. https://totallyamaha.com/snowmobiles/aa ... edLift.htm

I didn't like the flip up brackets that push on the running boards. We welded in 1/2" nuts and used some studs and toped the stud with round delrin pads. The Deere sleds a pretty low to the ground. I move them around with a dolly and then drop the skis on 2x6 blocks. The extra 2" is just enough to slide the lift under the sled.

[High Top]

Nick thanks for the link. That looks simple enough and yeah if you set the sled on blocks would be easy to stuff the lift under it. Here is what I made this spring to store/move mine in my shed.

Now this will only really be useful if someone has fork lift or tractor with forks. I have 2038R and it handles them fine on these pallets. I built them so I could pick them from the side or front/rear if needed. 8 ft by 40 inches.

[Cdnturboz]

looking forward to seeing more progress!

[High Top]

Got the seals replaced finally. Looked kinda ok from the outside but note how they were after getting them out. Spring broken and the other the lip was worn through.

Got more stuff cleaned up then dropped the belly pan down on a 2x4 across a couple jack stands to attempt to persuade the large dent back towards the ground. Wasn’t sure if it would work or not but I set a piece of 3/4 plate about 5x4 in size over the spot and got the BFH out. I’m not a smoker but I always wonder if I should have a smoke before attempting these endeavors. You know kinda calm the nerves before swinging 10 lbs of beef around and hopefully hitting that spot you picked out as a target. Maybe a smoke would tell me to consider a different method to safely get things back in position. At this point I decided to move forward with the current hammer and plate method. Well I should have had one anyways in case any of the neighbors were watching just to look cool…….. I loaded the guns up and gave it 3 swings at about 75% power. To my pleasant surprise it went back I will say very close to home position and I am calling it good. No need to risk further damage from a swing outside the zone.

[nick80lf]

I know the feeling. My 82 took a pretty hard hit at some point in it's life. There wad less than 1/4" clearance with the steering. The worst of my damage was right on one of the ribs. We took the heat and beat approach, didn't come out perfect but it very close and definitely reduces the likelihood of the steering hanging up at a bad moment.

[High Top]

Haven’t had very much extra time lately for working on the sport… army worm invasion, seeding peoples lawns, football season, terrible sickness that wrecked the guts…. Anyhow things are calming down and cooling down and I’m glad for that.

I got the sled up to high lift position to mess with the track and see what it needs. Couple broken grouser bars and a few missing rivets is all it seems to need. I searched for awhile to try and find hardware to use instead of rivets and what I decided to go with was M5 flanged button head screws and mechanical lock nuts from McMaster-Carr part numbers 97654A376 and 90045A112. These were sold in packs of 25 so they were at least more reasonable for price. I also put red loctite on them. I didn’t want the heads to stick up too high and do damage to the drivers so I did not use a washer but probably could have since they sucked down in track nicely when installed.

[nick80lf]

Stainless hardware....nice.

[High Top]

Got the major stuff back together and took it off the stand and back to the storage pallet.

Put the seat and a windshield off another machine on to see how she looked after the clean up and getting the hood sitting down on the tank and dash like it should. This machine had the hood hinge kinda mangled but over all it was all fairly straight and wasn’t hard to get tweaked back to where it should be. I guess the excitement of snow in Kansas got all the previous owners/riders of my machines too excited and they have all got some form of damage on the hood and hinge. Because of this all my exhaust pipes have some dents as well. The sport isn’t too bad and only has one on the lower part right behind the hood hinge. I’m guessing this should not be there but want to make sure so all the guys that know what’s the verdict? Will a dent this size affect performance at all? Should I just leave it alone or try to get it straight? How to accomplish this will be another challenge. My other machines definitely have worse dents and I think I will have to try and get them out.

[nick80lf]

I tried removing a dent in that area of a pipe once. Heated it and used a long rod to try to push it out. I think I would have been better off to not touch it. Reciently I saw someone pop a dent on a dirt bike pipe by heating it and then pressurizing the pipe. Not sure I'd try that myself. I once worked with a guy that tried to fix a dented metal globe with air pressure. He ended up getting several stitches out of that deal.

[snowmoer]

I would just leave the dent. It is not that bad and will not make that much difference in how it runs.

Another option for the cleats. Get the hardware for old style traction cleats. They have a large head like the rivets and use a locking nut on the metal side.