2010 Vintage Challange Ride with the Champs

[JoeRainville]

PJ,

A few late model support sleds are not a bad idea. Tom Rowland was smart enough to bring a big Bearcat Utility sled last year with extra gas and a few parts on it. (Tom, I hope Nick has a tank larger than 3 gallons this time, LOL!)

The trails are goomed PJ, so they shouldn't be hard on you, expecially on a modern sled. Thanks for offering to join us, and yea, bring a tow rope and a TAZER, just in case those Amber boys get out of hand...

-Rainville <insert icon for angel wings, LOL!>

[DeereKid9]

Now you guys understand what I go through traveling around with my dad. I can't trust him any farther than I can throw him.
I will be there also, and I really don't have a problem riding the challenge, even if it is on a modern sled ( a borrowed modern sled) to provide support. Just want to ride.

[Matt]

I gather that if we were all in agreement on the mixture ratio, that could be arranged. Tom.

If it's possible to get everyone on the same page, I think that would be the best time-saver. If we couldn't come to an agreement, I think a large gas station would be better, with a bunch of mixing gas cans on hand. The cans could be delivered by a support truck, or dropped off there a day or two before.

[400brian]

I've been thinking about this. I'm not sure what problem we would be fixing by having the mobile fuel tank Tom describes on hand.

Let me play devil's advocate:

Where are you going to site the tank that is a better location than the Cisco Lake Resort? ( in all this, I'm assuming the same route as last year ).

You would still be fueling sleds one at a time with the mobile tank.

Fuel availability was not our problem last year, getting all the sleds refueled quickly was. At Cisco, we got the hang of it after a bit, and the return stop went quite fast I thought. We kept the pump running, either into a sled, or into a fuel can. We kept track of our gallons, and tossed some money at the Waters Boy. My understanding was that the cash covered the bill. If the group becomes much larger this could become a problem I suppose.

The route we rode last year, pretty much kept us away from visible civilization. Sayner was the only town we went through, and that is just a few miles North of St Germain. Once we got into MI, I think we were running in National Forrest. The only place we saw any buildings were around the lakes.
I remember crossing very few roads! No multi-pump gas stations to be found.

Both Cisco and Fishtails had a single pump ( labled premium as I remember )
to service boaters and snowmobilers.

The idea that I've heard that I thought held the best chance of speeding the gas stops up, was to: Number 1; HAVE A SUPPORT TRUCK MEETING US AT THE STOPS.

Number 2; Have the riders mix their own fuel, in their own cans, and have them put it in the truck. For most riders, two cans will be plenty.
Then, when we get to the stops, a bunch of us can fuel at the same time out of our cans, while others can fuel from the pump. Gas n Go, we won't have time to take a whizz.

About 6 or 8 of us needed MI trail passes. This did take some time, as the machine had to print them out. I'm assuming you have to be IN MICHIGAN to buy a trail pass. A person might be able to get one ahead of time on-line, or I could get my buddy Campbell to get me one. After all, if we have been time stamped we've got to get moving!

[Sprailfire340]

It looks like you can get the MI trail passes online and have them mailed to you - they say 7-10 day turnaround. Check this out...
http://www.mdnr-elicense.com/welcome.asp

[Tom Rowland]

Hi all, I will miss reading this thread the next few days. I'll be away from my computer for the weekend while attending the Outlaw Grass Drag Swap Meet at Princeton MN. I think I'll even be able to meet up with John Deere Lover Extrordanaire (and closet Cat lover) Joe Rainville while there. Is always fun to talk old sleds with him and Adam and Nick. Will be looking forward to jumping right back on the Vintage Challange subject next week! Tom.

[Tom Rowland]

Hi all, I have mostly recovered from the Princeton event and it would be accurate to say that it was great. Am now looking ahead to Hay Days and another weekend of fun and work. Am back to thinking about Vintage Challange and what kind of ideas can be presented to make what was a fantastic first year even better. We left off with some discussion on options for gasoline. 400Brian, you bring up a good point that last years method for fueling was not so bad and it might go even better this year. I agree with you somewhat. You had suggested that most of us carry our own cans of gas in a support truck and that does sound simple enough. I have to wonder though if we have 50 sleds on the ride and each sled is going to require 8-14 gallons of gas for the ride...my math tells me that between 66 and 125 6-gallon gas cans will be required. That will take more than 1 truck/trailer to haul that many gas cans and then those same gas cans could use up any trailer space that could have been used to haul spare sleds, etc. Even when you get that many gas cans at a fuel site, I can visualize it not going real quick to get appropriate gas cans to the appropriate riders and back in the trailer again. Oh yea, funnels? The gasoline trailer idea that you are not as fond of could be handled by two volunteers and a single file line of sleds passing through. Have the rider remove his fuel cap, one volunteer adds the gasoline, the other volunteer records the gallons put into a particular sled (by recording a given number affixed to each sled). Certainly our ride will go on quite fine if we dont use the gasoline trailer, it is just one of many options available to keep the sleds moving. We would have to all be in agreement on gas/oil mixture though for this idea to work, and I do not know how feasable that may or may not be? Again, this is just a suggested idea.

[400brian]

Tom

Not trying to be a wet blanket. Much depends on how many sleds we are talking about. If the event grows substantially, we would need more fueling capacity, or launch in flights to spread everyone out.

[Tom Rowland]

Hi all,
Has been a long time since I have been to this fine site. Not so worried about the event planning details at this time as we had been discussing on this thread, I am sure the event organizers will do just fine on those items again. What I have been thinking about a lot lately is the 2010 Vintage Challange ride itself. My fellow 2009 Vintage Challange veteran Eric Bergstrom and I could recently take the pressure no longer. On a crisp November night this past week...with the thermometer hovering around 25 degrees, white frost on the grass, and, under the cover of darkness...we pulled our trusty rides from their summer resting areas to the heated workshop area to begin preparing for our 2nd Vintage Challange ride!


Over the next month or two our preperations will be in full swing...have any of you started getting ready yet?

[WinnipegStPaul9]

Sleds look great guys!! I think the 340/S and Cyclone are ready for the ride.

DA

[T White]

Hi Tom,
Great to see you and Eric all fired up for the Vintage Challenge. Looking forward to seeing you guys
again. I'm going to be riding this year. The Deere guys finally set the hook in me and I picked up a
Liquifire for the ride. Talk to you soon.
Tom

[Tom Rowland]

Great news Tom, Glad you will be out on the snow this year! As you already know, there was an adventure around every turn last year, I am sure this year will be similar. Do you have a lot, or a little, to do to the Liquifire before the ride?

[T White]

I'm going to fit it with handle bar warmers, stud it up and throw a windshield on it.
Other than that I'm going to try to get a few hunderd miles on it and dial in clutches.
I'm also going to put an Arctic Cat reverse ramp secondary on it. I can't wait for the
snow to fly!