Diesel Snow Mobiles for sale

[rob love]

My own experience in the arctic (as a mechanic....I was up in Alert for a boxtop about 36 years ago, and also up to whitehorse for an ex a few years after that) was just over 20 years ago when the battery I was tasked to went to repulse bay. We brought up a fleet of the Bombardier Alpine snowmobiles. While the locals appreciated the hauling capacity of these machines, they were not in local use. All the machines up there were primarily Yamaha or Kawasaki, which had no problems starting. For the Canadian machines, it required removing the carb at night and bringing it into the tent. In the morning, you warmed it up, quickly re-installed it, and used the pull start to get things going. Forget about the electric start.....that was a fantasy.



As a mechanic, I had brought one of those trigger propane torches along. When they could not get a machine going, I would bring the torch into the tent, warm up the cylinder over the coleman stove, place it in my parka and head out to the machine. By preheating the intake manifold and carb with the propane torch, good results were achieved. The reason for putting the torch on the coleman stove? Propane does not vaporize at -30 and we were way way below those temps.



If you google Dew D900 Snowmobile there seems to be a lot of reading available for them. From DEW:



https://www.dewengineering.com/case-...900-snowmobile




I would think that these diesel machines would be very reliant on glowplugs. The army went to a one fuel concept back in the 90s, which meant diesel. There were exceptions, and this would appear to be an attempt to meet that concept, along with the availability of JP as Robert mentions. . Note the ads for the machines state they were pulled from service in 2017, so most likely they have one season of operation, but possibly up to three.

[Tony Smith]

Originally Posted by rob love

While the locals appreciated the hauling capacity of these machines, .........

Over here, the experience of Snowmobiles is quite limited...

Looking at the Dew Engineering brochure, it looks like a towbar-like device on the rear of the snowmobiles that might be capable of attaching a pintle hook. Is this correct? And would they tow a wheeled trailer, or sleds?

[rob love]

The DND has special purpose built sleds for behind snow machines. When up North, however, the Inuit's qamutiik are much longer so have a greater cargo capacity over the DND ones.



There is mention that the nose of the diesel machines are quite heavy. As such, they are more likely to get stuck in softer snow. My limited arctic experience was that the snow in the arctic is not the same snow we have in the South. The ground ranges from very thin cover of snow with rocks peeking out, and where there are drifts, they are generally quite hard packed.

[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

Originally Posted by rob love

The DND has special purpose built sleds for behind snow machines. When up North, however, the Inuit's qamutiik are much longer so have a greater cargo capacity over the DND ones.



There is mention that the nose of the diesel machines are quite heavy. As such, they are more likely to get stuck in softer snow. My limited arctic experience was that the snow in the arctic is not the same snow we have in the South. The ground ranges from very thin cover of snow with rocks peeking out, and where there are drifts, they are generally quite hard packed.

The Inuit have something like 30 different names for snow depending on its characteristics.

I found that warm snow crunches, cold snow squeaks, but in the arctic really really cold snow chirps. The oddest snow I saw was the layered variety. There would be a blizzard, followed by wind which picked up exposed dirt, blizzard, dirt, blizzard dirt...the end result being snow with the consistency of dense styrofoam but really cool (sorry for the pun) layers of white and chocolate milk brown. Then there was the June snowstorms accompanied with 80 km/hr winds yet the 3/4" long mosquitos could still land on exposed skin, bite and blow away.

[rob love]

Originally Posted by Bruce Parker

The Inuit have something like 30 different names for snow depending on its characteristics.

I found that warm snow crunches, cold snow squeaks, but in the arctic really really cold snow chirps. The oddest snow I saw was the layered variety. There would be a blizzard, followed by wind which picked up exposed dirt, blizzard, dirt, blizzard dirt...the end result being snow with the consistency of dense styrofoam but really cool (sorry for the pun) layers of white and chocolate milk brown. Then there was the June snowstorms accompanied with 80 km/hr winds yet the 3/4" long mosquitos could still land on exposed skin, bite and blow away.

Yes Bruce, things are especially different in the arctic, where you hear the echoes of the ice cracking.


We were in our tent at a new location when one of the Bombers (artillery speak for a Corporal) came in to relate to us something new he had discovered about the arctic. It was extremely cold outside, but he had to relieve himself. That meant removing your arctic snot-mitts, lifting the parka somewhat, and fumbling around blindly with two layers of zippers in order to urinate. Whilst urinating, he realized he could not hear the yellow liquid hitting the ground. "Just another unique anomaly of the arctic" he thought to himself. As he redressed himself, he discovered that one of his arctic mitts, dangling from the dummy strings, was the cause of the lack of noise....he had filled his right mitt.

[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

Great story. What I found was that the need to pee was well constrained by either the difficulty in getting to it (god damn layers) or the shrivelled size (because of the cold) making it difficult. Contrary to public perception, the stream does survive unfrozen to the ground even at 40 below.

What I did take seriously was the idea that you could walk 20 feet in a blizzard and get turned around and freeze to death. Sometimes putting the garbage out was a life threatening adventure.

For a construction job we were using grease. The blizzard was impregnating it with snow at such a rate that it went pale green and resembled the consistency of cake icing. I think on that job I got both mosquito bites and frostbite.

Originally Posted by rob love

Yes Bruce, things are especially different in the arctic, where you hear the echoes of the ice cracking.


We were in our tent at a new location when one of the Bombers (artillery speak for a Corporal) came in to relate to us something new he had discovered about the arctic. It was extremely cold outside, but he had to relieve himself. That meant removing your arctic snot-mitts, lifting the parka somewhat, and fumbling around blindly with two layers of zippers in order to urinate. Whilst urinating, he realized he could not hear the yellow liquid hitting the ground. "Just another unique anomaly of the arctic" he thought to himself. As he redressed himself, he discovered that one of his arctic mitts, dangling from the dummy strings, was the cause of the lack of noise....he had filled his right mitt.