Vintage Mods & Restorations

Curt is one of the most standup guys in the industry and one of the last true mod shops left in operation. Any little bit helps.

Donate to Support Curt's Recovery and Business, organized by Tina Bleile On July 28, 2024, my hardworking husband, Curt, had a mild stroke. He owns his own bu… Tina Bleile needs your support for Support Curt's Recovery and Business

Keeping with the theme off oddballs and prototypes. Here’s a look into the early stages of development for the Polaris IQ platform. Pictures like these really make a guy wonder the fate of some of these sleds. 🤔

I know there’s plenty of other guys out there that love to see the weird one off stuff, how about this wild front suspension from Bobby Pallansch? One of two sleds they were testing at the time.

I wanted to hold off on posting this until I had a chance to talk with him. Our friend Norm Hebert could use some well wishes. Unfortunately last Thursday his shop caught fire. Norm being faced with the reality of losing one of his most prized possessions made an attempt to rescue the sled. He suffered some serious burns to his arms and face but is expected to recover fine. It is not clear whether or not there’s enough left of the snowmobile to try and resurrect it. Norm will recover and that’s what’s important.

There were some cool sleds out in Valdez over the weekend. 😎

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/gc3SS7Neby1YQYCu/?mibextid=WC7FNe

Well now that things are finally slowing down around here it’s time to welcome one of my long term projects back into the shop. I had sent this one away close to a year ago for some extensive welding to be done on the tunnel skin. Unfortunately things didn’t work out and a couple of weeks ago I got it back. It makes me sad to see it back here in this condition but I’m hoping that with some help from Shad SJS Customs we will be able to save this skin. If not we’re looking at starting over from scratch…

How cool is this? My buddy Norm Hebert made quite the trip to get his 1500cc tube chassis beast back. Let’s all hope to see him have this monster back at Jackson very soon. 😎

Well it wasn’t quite ready to race beaver but it wasn’t from a lack of effort. There was a ton of work put in during the last week not only by myself but also a few close friends. Unfortunately a couple of small things kept me from running it today but MAN I am happy with how this thing turned out. There’s a few small details to be added but overall this thing came out so cool. 😎

Yesterday afternoon was spent down at K&T Performance getting the Starting Line Products (SLP) race pipes fit to the chassis. This is the second set of pipes Rayce has done for me and I couldn’t be happier with how they’ve both turned out 😎

Super productive night at SJS Customs. The first step was tacking the new front cross member in place. Then we cut off the old steering hoop and began fitting the new one. Everything worked out extremely well. Just look at the comparison photos of the dash fitment before and after. 🤯 The only thing left on the chassis fabrication is the steering post.

Rules Posted for Locals/Vintage. Come out and have a good time and see some cool old iron.

There’s being nervous and then there’s taking a sawzall and grinder to a very hard to find chassis….😅 Tonight the focus was the front crossmember. First was cutting and notching the new piece to fit the shock towers. Then verifying it against the drawing and setting it in place below the existing piece. Then came cutting and grinding away all of the old tubing and welds. Finally once getting it to fit just right it was time to set the motor in place to verify clearance to the exhaust valves.

Yesterday kicked off the start of the chassis fab. This chassis used geometry based on the early 99-2000 edge chassis with the really thick dash panel and laid back steering. I really wanted to update to a little more rider forward design like the later hillclimb sleds of Darin and Ricks. After some Trigonometry courtesy of my engineer friend Levi Johnson I made up a quick blue print for a new steering hoop. Another issue I was having was the big billet Union Bay cylinder and exhaust valve configuration was hitting on the front crossmember. Being this chassis was built before exhaust valves it just used a straight tube. Again using the newer holz chassis as a reference. A new part was drawn up. Now that I had the drawings I went over to my friend Glenn Floyd’s shop and watched as he quickly laid out all the required bends using his “run and gun” and calibrated eyeball method. Watching Glenn work is awesome he is truly a craftsman and gear head at his core.

Got the skid installed much earlier than anticipated. Soon enough to drag it outside and get some photos in the daylight. 🤩 Now the hard work begins…

Tonight I finished assembling the new skid with a bunch of help from Avid Products and Fastrax Motorsports/Union Bay Racing the skid is mounted in the chassis a little differently than a Polaris which the rails are from. Because of this I ended up cutting about 4” from the ends of the rails. I also pressed on my new drivers also from Avid and got a few more parts in the mail. It’s going to be a miracle if this thing is ready in 6 days to go racing but I’m sure going to try. 😎

Next Weekend! If you’re wanting to get into Vintage Hillclimb this is the event to get started in my opinion! Next to Jackson this is the biggest vintage event there is.

Only one more week! Spread the news and plan ahead now! We will be running RMSHA Friday and Saturday, then after they are done we are hosting our LOCALS, VINTAGE and DASH FOR CASH races! All with CASH prizes at the end! More info coming on that soon, so stay tuned!

If you haven’t had to opportunity to checkout Farm Sled Racing you’re missing out! Doug has some awesome nostalgic content over there.