Thanks Ben. They were a blast last year:wee:

Dean, also from the otherside of the pond, I am impressed, that looks sweet and make me thinking also , Last year we had also much snow on the Ice, so if you drove from a black ice spot onto some snowy spots, you flt them braking, so for deeper spots of snow , this could be a solution I think.

Thanks for sharing !!
best regards,
Jeroen aka Ozzy

Thank you for the compliments Ozzy. Glad you like them . I'm hoping to be able to make it to NABX 2011 to ride with you guys. I can't let Ricardo be the only lightweight speedster out there:wee:

Sweet, Dean.

Did you press in sealed bearing into a tube, or just make up some simple sleeve bearings for the axle bolts? Snowmobile plastic skis are cheap as compared to trying to find 3 used skis with carbides.

krumly

As you can see in the first pic I went with a standard bearing arrangemt for the front blade. Solid piece of steel turned on a lathe to accept the 12mm bearings and spacer. For the rear,,,,if you have 20mm then I'd do the same thing as the front but flexifoil has 12mm rears which in my opinion wouldnt last 1 run on the ice so I opted to find the perfect size tube that would slide over the axle to give support therefore only requiring the 12mm bolt to hold it on but there isn't any load on the bolt itself. I'm very glad I went this route because you are able to hold huge amounts of power on ice blades as opposed to tires and weak links show themselves quickly. On tires you'll lose traction long before you see metal bend before your eyes. On blades that isn't the case. I was shocked to see my downtube twist more than 30 degrees on heavily powered runs:o. We all know they twist but your tires slide long before any kind of problem occurs. Not so with blades. There's no way 12mm bolts on the rear would hold up to lateral loads far in excess of what they see with tires. At least not with me driving they wouldn't.

I thought the ski skins were cheap also. They come in pairs and were inexpensive and easily available. All modern snowmobiles now come with composite ski's making these ski skins a great deal. They're more than 1/4 inch thick plastic and truely indestructable. . I looked into the carbides at the time but found them to not only be ridiculously expensive in my area but they were also designed around the needs of a snowmobile and not really a wind powered ice buggy. I don't think they'd be as efficient or provide as much grip as a true blade. I could be wrong though:dunno:. For what they cost I wasn't going to bother to try them to find out.

See you guys out on the ice:wee:

Dean its about time you posted pics of your set up , could be the most workable solution to having an ATB , that would be B as in Buggy.

I was going to post them last winter but I got so busy around here there just wasn't any time. Glad you guys like them . Hopefully more people will give things like this a shot. We need more buggiers getting out there in the wintertime:wee:

Well despite the skepticism I tried my bike chain idea and it worked pretty well. see page 1 of this post for details. I was able to hold a decent edge and tack back and forth for a while and then did a couple mile downwinder all while pulling my son in a sled. The wind started strong and gusty and died down during the ride. I was flying a hydra 3.0 The ice had 1-2 inches of snow on about 50% and about 25% black ice 25% deeper drifts 4-6 in. I really like the skate ideas but this was completely free and installation and removal is just slightly harder than letting the air out of your tires and then refilling them. One short section of chain did roll about a 1/4 in into a groove, but it stayed there and worked fine. I wouldn't have noticed except that is made a different noise as the tire rolled. I'm hopping to get out again before the ice melts but I'm running out of time.
Ben

Thanks for the update , will try it myself next year.