This is where it all happens, my little single car garage, made a work bench and finally had a reason to organise my tools. No air tools just arm strong. Wife parks her car in the driveway now, not happy when she has to scrape the ice of the windshield in the morning.
The Elan was all there, but showing it's age, I had to ship it from northern Norway about 1500 KLM away.
First thing was clean gas tank change spark plug, had a hard time at first trying to start it, but it wasn't the rotax fault, it was my inexperience with this motor, I flooded it all the time. Cleaned the carburetor and spark plug cable and it started with 3 pulls.
Sent a picture to the forum, one member said that this sled had a mikuni carburetor conversion, I should send the previous owner a thank you card. Heard both sides of the story when it comes to tilly vs. mik carburetors, some say tillys are gas spitting plug fouling junk, and some say if a tilly carb is set up correctly these old rotaxes love them. I have no experience with either, so I'll pass judgement in a few years. 
The wife and kids wanted to ride the sled too, but had a hard time with the pull starter, hunted down a electric starter through I guy I met surfing the web, his name is Rich Halh, another good fella, restores 60's ski doo's. Does quality work, you can check it out here http://www.antiquesnowmobile.com/. Installed the starter as you can see on the picture above there is a ring gear behind the fan, so all I did is bolt the starter on buy a battery and a switch, now the 247 one lunger fires up when you touch the key. Battery won't charge, need to find a correct rectifier for this year Elan to be able to convert AC current from lighting coil to DC to charge battery. The fan and the starter cup was trashed so I got a starter cup from Kimpex and Sledder Al sent me a good fan.
Things went pretty smooth with disassemble until I got to the front and rear drive axles secondary clutch and chain case. There was a lot of head scratching and pestering forum members but managed to get track, clutch, front and rear axles, chain case and boggy assemblies off.
This sled is a mish mash of different year parts, as you can see with this secondary clutch 2 halves are different colours. What I've been told is the gold half is from a 71 Elan and the orange could be original, not real important, it works, bought some red/orange chevy engine enamel, which I learned is a good match, so I'll clean and paint before I put it back
The stationary pulley on the secondary clutch needed some work, the splines that the top chain sprocket mounts on needed a little filing so the sprocket could slip on and off.
Next job was boggy wheel assemblies, all bearings needed to be replaced and 15 of the 16 rubber wheels were cracked and needed replacing, used a puller to remove bearings, not that hard to do. I will sand blast and paint the assemblies before I put them back on.
Well with help from the forum guys, I got down to the frame, belly pan is a little dented, nothing some heat a hammer and a lot of patience won't fix, I'll cut off the old cargo carrier, got a new chrome one for some bling.
One thing I want to stress, that this is my first attempt with this kind of project, never own a snowmobile, and by no means a mechanic. Went at this with no experience. But with help from friends, I'm starting to feel like I can get it done.
Learning something every day and meeting lots of good people.
2 comments:
Hello! i've got a ski-doo 76 elan too, it is in original shape and havent been changed in a single way since it was bought! it has been passed down within the family as long as the snowmobile has lived, and it works perfectly! it is a really good snowmobile for being so old, it NEVER breaks and the kids just love it since they can handle it themselves!
Great little sled!! But you better be handy with a wrench, or know someone who is, these old sleds are not trouble free and nothing worst then being let down on the trail.
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