The 'Ol Bubbletops - > From Charles Plueddeman - Bubble Hood Fever

Bubble Hood Fever

By Charles Plueddeman

I distinctly remember my last ride on my first snowmobile. It was a warm, spring afternoon, probably a Saturday or a Sunday, one of those weekends where you just know you’d better be out riding because at the rate the ditches are filling with runoff, the snow could well be gone before you get another chance. I was bouncing across Wilton Hilger’s front 40 on a trail that ran parallel with the corn stubble when I noticed that my right ski was missing. Losing a ski didn’t really hamper the handling of a 1970 Ski-Doo Olympic, especially on a rough corn field, so I may have ridden some distance before coasting to a stop to investigate. Seems an especially stout corn stalk had yanked the ski outboard hard enough to twist and snap the ski leg, which would happen on those sleds. The ski legs seemed to be sacrificial, designed the break away and protect the rest of the machine.

I trudged back up the trail, found the ski, and then found a good place to put it – in the air scoop hole in the hood. It slipped right in, like a rifle in a horse scabbard. I fired up the sled and rode five miles home.

I never fixed the ski. This was the spring of 1976, and I was a senior in high school. I think by then I knew that I would probably be a husband that summer, and shortly thereafter a father, and didn’t see how that snowmobile was really going to fit into my future. And when my friend, Fred Zuhlke, offered be $20 for the Oly, with the ski still in the hood, I took the cash. Last I saw that sled, it was in Fred’s truck. A few years later a drunk driver killed Fred, and I never have found out what happened to my snowmobile. It might still be in his mother’s barn. I’ve never had the nerve to ask.

That’s how a four-year love affair with that sled came to an end. Here’s how it began. I grew up in Markesan, Wis., in Green Lake county, a farm town of about 1,300. The snowmobile boom hit our town hard, and I was the perfect age to get the fever. We were kids who could walk around the fields adjacent to town and, like mountain men tracking game, ID a snowmobile by the print made by its track.

It was a Ski-Doo town, thanks to the local John Deere dealership, Ahrens Implement, which sold the yellow sleds. A little later the local Chevy dealer took on Sno-Prince for awhile, and our neighbor had one of those. Another down the street had a Chaparral, and the lone Cat that I remember was owned by Eugene "Chico" Page, who owned the Shell station and rode a Big Mouth 643 Puma with Montana Pipes. One night the throttle froze open while he was riding across Little Green Lake, and Chico had to jump off and watch his Cat slam into the shore. Bent the tunnel at a sick angle. I still remember we all went down to the station after school to look at it.

The Object of His Desire...

So we got a 1966 Super Olympic from Jim Fox, a dairy farmer who was the captain of my usher team at church, and who was a racer with a few runs at Rhinelander under his belt. Told us he raised the compression on that Rotax 247 by replacing the head gasket with one cut from aluminum foil. I guess we got that sled in 1969. My excuse to ride was a string of pheasant feeders I had to maintain around the fields across from our house. Checked them every night after school, even if it was minus 10.

Of course, I had to get my own sled, and of course it had to be a Ski-Doo. My family was friends with the parents of Jon Schweder, who was maybe 10 years older than me and ran a marine dealership on Lake Puckaway. He raced Ski-Doo sleds, first a modified 370 Olympic and later an Elan in Stock A. I believe he was the USSA Central Stock A champ one year, and told me all about meeting Yvon Duhamel at Eagle River, so I thought Jon was pretty cool.

My sled was a deal that was struck behind my back by my parents and Schweders. Jon had a 1970 Oly chassis, and an Elan that he was making into a little mod racer, so the idea was hatched to stick the Elan motor in the Oly and sell it to me. This was the 12-horsepower 247, with an HL carb. I wasn’t going to get hurt on this thing. Well, I was thrilled at the prospect, and spent a summer working after-hours at the local grocery store stocking shelves to make the $125 selling price. I was promised delivery upon the first snow. And sure enough, one snowy Sunday in morning in 1972, I looked out my bedroom window and the neatest snowmobile in the world was parked in the driveway.

I now realize how much trouble Jon went through to build this sled for me. The Oly, it turned out, had been backed into by a pickup truck, which caved in the hood. He glassed up the damage, but the pop-up headlight was fixed in the "up" position. You can see the custom paint job in the photo. Guess he had a can of flat black handy. Blizzard tape dressed up the tool box. Those with a sharp eye will notice that the left ski is from an Evinrude. That’s the way it came.

First thing I did was cut down the windshield to racer height. Next came a set of Union Carbide "Jack Rabbit" oil stickers. There was no airbox on the tiny carb, but I had seen a photo in one of the magazines of a racer that used beer cans for velocity stacks, so I cut the bottom out of a root beer can an mounted that on the carb. I thought that was pretty racy, too.
I rode that sled to all over the county that winter, even to school a few times. Often to see a girlfriend in Marquette, which was maybe a 30-mile round trip. I had to plan that ride, because the headlight never worked. The sled had an key switch from an electric start sled, but no switch to power the light. Never figured that out. That spring I pulled the motor and cleaned it all up, and then, no doubt prompted by another magazine article, decide to de-carbon the motor. I got it all apart and cleaned out, and then realized I needed a ring compressor to put the cylinder back on. And a torque wrench. And circlip pliers. To teach me a lesson, my dad made me take the parts in a box to the Ski-Doo dealership and ask if they could please put it back together. Which they did. And didn’t charge me, I suppose because they figured the humiliation was cost enough.

That sled must have been slow, but I don’t recall that was ever an issue for me. At least I was never breaking belts. In fact I don’t thik it ever broke down on the trail. Losing a ski was no big deal. I got pretty good at replacing bogy springs, which broke with some frequency. And I learned how to clean a carb, and to never push down the spark plug cap when the motor is running. That hurt. One day Fred Zuhlke showed up at high school on a 245 RV into which he had stuffed a 440 Blizzard twin. He cut a hole in the hood for the heads. Now that was a cool sled. Wonder if it’s still in his mother’s barn.

Thanks Larry for a great site and a chance to tell a story. – Charles Plueddeman