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Made some new rail extensions today.

16K views 20 replies 11 participants last post by  FlatCat12 
#1 ·
Well I bought back my 98 ZR 600 EFI that I had long tracked a few years age and am getting it back into running shape. One thing that was never quite right was the track setup. You see, when I built it I put in 8 tooth drivers so I could cram a tall lugged track, and I used Mountain Machines rail extensions. The MM extensions are high quality, but were made for 8" wheels. The sled ran fine with this setup, but the track was still pretty loose even when the adjustment was maxed out.

My buddy told me that the last few trips that he had it on the track would ratchet occasionally. It happened only rarely, but when I bought the sled back I decided to do something about it. I basically had 3 options. First, I could get 8 inch wheels, but that's $120 even for the cheap plastic ones. Second, I could drill a couple new mounting holes in the tunnel and move the skid back an inch. Or, I could put on new extensions. I recently built a CNC milling machine, so I decided to put it to use on this project. I already had some aluminum, so the only cost was my time.

Here is one of the extensions I made. They are now mounted on the sled and worked great. I can now fully adjust the track tension with adjustment to spare. I didn't get any pictures of them installed yet but will update later. These are made to use the stock wheels with a 1" tip up at the back of the skid.
 

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#2 ·
Nice job! I'd love to have a CNC mill, we had one in school for a tester and they're really easy to write programs for
 
#5 ·
Well the theory at least is that since the extended part of the track is tipped up, that the sled will respond on hard pack like a 121" sled, without additional "push" when turning. Then in the powder it will still have all the benefits of the long track.
 
#8 ·
You could go into the rail extension biz now

Sent from somewhere in MN
 
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#11 ·
I think the mill was $1200 and then I probably have another $1000 to $1500 in it the way it sits right now. However, I already had a bunch of tooling, measuring equipment, etc. because I used to be a machinist and I also had a different mill and lathe before I stated this project. You could easily spend another couple thousand dollars on that stuff alone.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2
 
#14 ·
I finally remembered to take a picture of the extensions mounted on the sled.

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#15 ·
I put 144" TracksUsa extensions on my 136" 07 Crossfire 8 (Love it!). After I got mine all put together my brother looked at the extensions and the spare track and said how hard can it be to extend his 121 to a 136? So he tore my sled back apart and had a buddy mill extensions for his sled. Needless to say it was 10pm the night before we left for WY and he was still working on it. It's amazing how well an old snowmobile sign works for a tunnel extension.
 
#16 ·
They definitely don"t have to be complicated. I have put the dirt simple slp extensions on a polaris and they work fine. The ones I made are quite a bit more complicated because of the tip up I put in. adding provision for the hyfax eould make it even more complicated.

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#18 · (Edited)
Really with a CNC its not that much more other than a few extra tools and the program. Just curious. You said you made your CNC. What controller did you use???
 
#19 ·
Yeah, the simplest extensions are ones like the SLP that are basically just a rectangular bar with no provision for hyfax. They just move the rear axle back. Up from there you get the ones that move straight back but have provision for hyfax. Then all of the other variations. Personally I don't think extending the hyfax buys you anything on a 121 to 136 extension.

For my mill I used LinuxCNC which is a free open source control program that runs in Linux on a PC.
 
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