Snowmobile Repair

[Dennis Steele]

I am looking for a place in the twin cities that will rebuild my 89 Indy 500.
The motor is blown and needs new pistons.
Any reliable places I can take it?

And
What do you think it might cost?

[hanson]

Dennis,

One of the casualties from Buffalo Bay, huh?

I rebuilt the motor on my Indy 500 once before, that one happened to be an 89 also. I have enough confidence to rebuild my own machine but I don't know if I'd do it for someone else.

What I can tell you is it will cost some $$$ to get it done. Two new pistons and rings will run about $100-150 for the pair, new gaskets will be another $50, and the cylinders is where it gets spendy. If you didn't score them too bad and they haven't been previously overbored, that would be the way to go. Otherwise forget about paying dealer cost for a new set, Polaris quoted me around $600 for a new set of cylinders. I ended up snooping around on HSOList for awhile and landed an awesome set that was rebuilt with a port & polish job for $75. Then add labor costs on top of it all.

The bummer about the Polaris Indy 500 motor are the cylinders are a monoblock design, they are not separate. So if you fry one, you have to replace them both. Something else to check on is the water pump belt. If it stretches too much over time, it'll slip on the pulleys and you won't get the cooling you need. Mine would run fine at idle but as soon as I ran 50 mph for awhile and came to a stop, my heat exchangers would be ice cold which is not good. All that heat is building up in the motor and then you know what happens.

[Grabs]

Dennis, a guy here at work had one rebuilt by the Waconia Farm store.

[ChuckN]

Something to consider for older sleds....find a snowmobile salvage that has a used replacement motor or parts. There's a salvage place by me called Dan's snowmobile salvage. He has a HSOforum.

Fixing older sleds can get expensive, sometimes more $$ to repair than to find another cheap replacement snowmobile.

[This message has been edited by ChuckN (edited 06-01-2004).]