78 Liquifire rebuild!

[snowmoer]

I would leave the heat exchanger as it is. My Ski Doo's have a finned exchanger like this and I have never had any problems with it. Unless you are going to ride in low snow conditions on dirt roads, everything will be just fine.

[400brian]

I took the exchanger fins down to about 1/8" and called it good.
Just have it sitting in the tunnel for the photo, but you get the idea.

I started out with a 40 grit flap wheel, but that was too slow, so I switched to a regular grinding wheel. I have been told the disc would clog, but I really had no problems. I went through 3 grinder discs on this job, and the finished off with a 120 flap disc and then an orbital sander.

[400brian]

We have a had a lot of family trauma as of late, but I did finally get the heat exchanger installed. I put new push washers on the carriage bolts to hold them in place, polished up the hose fittings, put a bit of sealant on the foam gaskets, and then added new washers and nuts.

[400brian]

Been a while since I have updated here. Grandson and I have been hard at work on the '37 JD B project.

One thing that I haven't touched on, is my plan to partially re-clip the track. The Arctic Cat track has two type of clips installed, flat clips and guide clips. The guide flange is placed against the inner involute drive lug in every other track window.

Probably most if not all the guys running these tracks are running them "as is". As I am a glutton for punishment, I am not only modifying the skid to more closely match the window centerline, I plan to replace the cat guide clips with the Deere style. The reason for doing this is that the guides do not perfectly line up with the track lugs, and the steel guides wear into the plastic track drivers. The Cat guides run against the outside of the hyfax, while the Deere guides run against the inside. This gets the guide completely away from the drivers, as shown in the top photo.

I have never re-clipped a track before, but I have the Deere style clips on hand, and the crimping tool bought, so eventually I am going to try my hand at it.

[400brian]

So this is the first track re-clipping I have ever done. It is the first track I have ever owned that has had clips, so this is all new.

I am cutting the clips with a 1/16" disc in the angle grinder. After cutting a few off, I kinda got the hang of it, and I got a lot faster at it.

I make a good pass with the wheel, cool the clip with water from an old Windex bottle, make another pass, cool it again, then look to see where you are. You are trying to avoid cutting into the rubber, and it is easy to do. On most of them, I at least leave a mark. I find it best to not try to cut them completely in half. Cut them thin, then tap a screw driver or small chisel along the groove to split the clip. If it doesn't split, cut a bit more. Once I spit the clip with the screw driver blade, I can pry each half off and pull it out with a pliers.

I have the guide clips off one side now, and I maybe spent an hour.

[nick80lf]

Re-cliping a track is not for the faint of heart. The clips on the one I did in the late 90s were so thin I was able to pry them off with a screwdriver very easily. At the time I swore I would never re-clip another track but since aftermarket tracks are no longer avaliable I may reconsider that thought when the time comes.

[400brian]

Ok, all of the guide clips are off, once I got the hang of it, it went fairly fast. These clips were not very worn, so cutting them off seemed to be the only option.

To the best of my knowledge, I am the only one who is deranged enough to re-clip the track to the Deere style. While everyone else just puts the rubber track in and runs it, I have narrowed my skid to match the window spacing of the Yokohama track, and am now looking forward to installing the clips Deere used in their place.

[400brian]

So I started putting the clips on, as usual there is a learning curve. I have 4 on. I quickly identified a couple of issues. The clips kept jumping out of position in the crimping tool. I tried narrowing their spread a little with the hammer on the bench vise so they fit and feed into the tool better and that seems to help. The next thing is that the point in the forming die is cutting into the track. I am going to grind it down a bit and see if I can resolve that.

[400brian]

The track is finished! After modifying the forming die in the tool ( I ground most of the point off ) and reducing the spread of the clips before installing them, it all went quite fast. One evenings work to finish up the track.

[400brian]

So after over a year, I am back looking at my suspension. It is a mixture of 78 Cross Country rails, a modified Trailfire rear arm, and a 80+ LF front arm.

At Brock Weber's suggestion I have inverted the rear arm, and am now back to deciding how and where to put the upper idlers. Both the 78 CC suspension and the Trailfire used a separate idler shaft with a pair of 4" wheels at the rear of the tunnel to carry the track up and over the rear suspension arm. The 80+ LF suspension was quite similar to the CC suspension, but one of the differences was that the idler wheels had been relocated to the rear suspension arm rather than on a separate shaft.

Having the wheels mounted on the rear arm makes more sense to me, although Brock is running the separate shaft on the 78 CC he rides. That said, the custom hybrid suspensions he builds have the idlers mounted on the rear arm.

I have been thinking about this a long time now with out making a final decision, it was getting time to move forward. I contacted Brock recently, and we spent a few minutes on the phone discussing the pros and cons. Brock tells me he has built around 50 of the suspensions he sells, and that they work. My question was where do I locate the idlers on my rear arm? The CC position puts the wheels much higher above the rear arm than where the 80+ LF arm had them mounted. My concern was that the drive lugs inside the track would be rubbing on the rear springs if I set the wheels too low. If a guy was running a 80+ rear arm the shock mount would be the highest part of the arm for the track to make contact with. With the Trailfire arm inverted, the springs are now the highest part.

Brock suggested that I was overthinking the problem, and that I should just weld some tabs on the Trailfire arms in more or less the stock posistion and that it would work.

I am including a photo of one of Brock's custom hybrid suspensions that Troy Miley has, and the brackets made of steel flashing that I am using to mock up the wheel position on my rear arm. The lowest hole is stock LF, the upper hole is an approximation of the CC shaft, and I have the wheels in between. These wheels are the 4 1/4" dia. wheels New Breed sells, as the originals are no longer available.

[nick80lf]

From what I've seen with the 80+ liquifire suspensions, when there is no weight on the suspension the shock mount rubs the center lugs. If everything is working like it should, when you put weight on the suspension the blocks on the rear arm slide back and the top will pivot down so the shock mount doesn't rub. I've always wondered why they designed these like this. I would think it only takes some moderate bumps to uncompressed the suspension while the track is moving.

[400brian]

Since I started this thread in March of 2023, to date it has garnered over 1.6 million views, and currently is averaging around 50 views per day. I find this astonishing! To be blunt, much of the day to day JD discussion has migrated to Face Book in the last few years. While this site is still being used, it is nothing like it was back in the early 2000s. But even in it's hey day, we didn't see these kinds of views on threads.

I can't help but wonder where where all these views are coming from? Are they legit, are they bots, or what? Matt says they seem legit from what he can tell. So I have a favor to ask, my guess is that a lot of these views are coming from folks who have not joined this site. If you enjoy keeping up with this thread and are not members of the site, consider joining and letting me know how you came to this page, it doesn't cost anything to do so.
I would like to see this site revitalized, because in my opinion it is far superior to Face Book, as the topics and threads remain and can be searched years after the fact. I even refer back to posts I made years ago to remind myself of details I have forgotten.

[400brian]

Today I assembled the driveshaft for the sled. The 78 CC used a hex shaft, the same part that was later used on the Liquidator. This was the first use of a hex driveshaft, which was then used on Trailfires, Sportfires, and second gen Liquifires.

The early hex shafts were drilled for bolt on drivers on each end. Aluminum tube spacers were used to locate the center driver, as drilling a hole in the center of the shaft was an invitation to failure. The later hex shafts used a press on driver, so those shafts are not drilled.

Here I am using an early shaft, with NOS bolt on drivers. They are for a 2.52 pitch track. I have pressed new rear idlers on bogie sled axles in the past, but pressing on hex drivers was a whole new experience. I chamfered the edges of the drivers with an exacto knife, and lubed the driver and shaft with a spritz of windex, they pressed on quite easily. Rather than aluminum tube for spacers, I used plastic.

One more item done!

[nick80lf]

I agree, I find the multiple Facebook groups hard to deal with. Seems like once a post on Facebook runs it's course, it's gone never to be seen again. Pretty much the same for me, I come here frequently to remind myself of details I have forgotten.

[jep_800]

I purposely deleted my Facebook account years ago, as I just didn’t have the energy or passion to view it every day and see what folks are saying…. I guess if it’s not my family or inner circle of friends I just don’t care all that much.

So I agree, I prefer this site much more, as I like to review past threads to find new information or review what I once knew. I love the content and like to see what guys are doing and maybe even help with an issue I’ve already experienced. Restoration topics are probably my favorite. Next would be RWTC discussions, and the Tech Help threads. Always learning something.

JP