IN THE BEGINING

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.

Had a hard time with removing the ski legs, they were bent badly, another good fella on the forum had a set of good ones with top and bottom bushings and sent them to me from Canada.

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.

About me

Name is Bill Bula, originally from Southern Ont. Canada. For the last 8 years I have lived with my wife of 15 years Lisbeth, kids Kristi 15 Carly 12 and our Labrador Emma in Norway.

It's a small town population of around 4000 called Rjukan. There is a historical significance here in this town concerning heavy water and German occupation that I will not get into now, but if you are curious about the facts just Google the towns name and all will be answerd.

I'm a baby boomer born in 55, work as a sales engineer here in town, a good job that allows me to travel the world. Wife is a school teacher, so we enjoy all the comforts of a middle class family.

Love nature, fishing of any form gets me excited!! Fly, worm, spinner or on the ice, I do it all. My wife is Norwegian and we live in the town she grew up in. Her mother has a cottage up in the mountains, 30 minute drive from our home. No running water and an outhouse but every minute spent there is a gift. In the summer you can drive within 200 meters of the cabin and hike the rest. Winter is a different story, 2 meters of snow and a cross country ski trip of 4 klm. pulling a sled with food and drink for the weekend or longer.

Last October I was involved in a bad car crash and resulted with 14 screws and 2 plates in my left hip. Recovery has been slow, but I hope to be back to work by the end of summer.This brings me to the point of beginning this blog, with the injury I decided that cross country skiing would be put on hold for a few years, and to be able to get to the cabin in winter I would use a snowmobile. I love all things vintage, cars, motorcycles, cameras, watches and radios. I can sit and watch discovery channel where the guy rebuilds an old car or bike and be completely entertained. Wishing for such a project myself I decided a vintage snowmobile would be a practical and inexpensive project. But which one would I use?

I went to the Internet and googled vintage snowmobiles and was amazed at the hits. Just by luck the first one I opened was Sledder Al's Vintage Snowmobile page http://home.cogeco.ca/~alamore1/SNOWMOBILES/SNOWMOBILES.htmlhe turns out to be the one that starts me up. I send him an email telling him of my plan and ask him what sled would be reliable and good in deep snow. He replied the next day you should look for an Elan. Ask around some more and get the same answer, Elan.So I went to the Norwegian equivalent of eBay and found a 1976 Elan 250E white hood with penguins, paid too much, but that's okay.Being the age I am, my computer use was always work related or fact finding on the Internet, forums were unknown to me. But on Al's page there is a link to oldski-doosled forum, joined that and I have been pestering all the members for information ever since. I would like at this time to thank each and every member that has helped this green as grass Ski Doo owner start and continue this project. They are too many to mention but they know who they are. Thanks from 75 Elan.I have never had negative comments only great information, I'm no mechanic by any means, only have a little experience with 2-stroke outboard motors with my father who collected them when he was alive. I have some tools and not afraid to use them. I can ask the most fundamental questions on this forums, and always get help, never a snicker or "you got to be kidding". Some of the technical discussions on this forum are way over my head, guys like goose, 1970TnT, Bones and Poidy continuously amaze me with there knowledge I sit there slacked jawed at there technical jargon. I only hope I can learn half of what they forgot.So now I have started my project, I have started about 2 weeks ago and have spent many hour out in the garage with my sled. Enjoying every minute.