Leaf spring ski skins

B

Blue Hornet

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I was wondering if anybody has ever seen plastic ski skins for a leaf spring sled? I have a 81 ss 440 thats gonna get redone and the skis are worn through. I figured why not add skins instead of new skis. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 

I once built a nice pair of aluminum uppers, riveted to plastic ski skins for a sweet little 77 GP 440. Wasn't that hard, and not only did they look trick, they worked awesome! Basically the same as early "Ekholm" skis with the rivets countersunk into the bottoms, only for a leafer!

There's an outfit on here someplace that builds real nice aluminum skis for late model SRX's that could be modified pretty easily if you had a welder buddy? These guys don't even bother running plastic skins if I remember correctly, claiming that the modern aluminum alloy polished up compared to plastic gettin scuffed and torn up, and was thus, even faster than plastic in the long run. No word on longevity, though. I suppose that depends how much dirt you'll be running through!?

All that you would need to do is buy a pair of these aluminum jobbies, cut a strip out of the center from front to back for the spring, (just wide enough for the spring to pass through, leaving you with a small flange on top of the sides) with brackets fabricated and welded in front and rear. That's basically all that I did. The front one was made for the brass insert. Then you can make the choice whether or not to rivet a pair of skins on, or not? As I remember they placed a 3/16 rivet every two inches on each side, which is plenty!

Either that, or get a set of new black steel jobber replacement skis and bolt a pair of skins on with them the skag bolts! I know what I'd do, and I know which you'd prefer, the rest is up to you bro. They'd be pretty sweet. G.
 
Hello i am planing to buy or manufactring aluminum leaf spring skis
for my SRX -79
Photo or internet links to buy, drawings are welcome
Kim
 
You can still buy plastic ski skins from Royal Distributing. You want the 1/4" thick ones. They should be able to fit onto the bottom of a steel ski, or you could do what I did and build or have built aluminum uppers like the ones in the pic. The material used for the sides and top and bottom lips are 1/8" thick aluminum and the handles are just 1/2" aluminum conduit. The sides have a 1" lip welded onto them so that you can rivet the plastic bottoms to the skin. Use good quality rivets, I used 3/16" stainless. Drill the holes about 2" apart and then countersink them about halfway through the plastic so the heads of the rivets are below the surface of the plastic and not causing you drag. I made a mistake with these by leaving too much material on top which I later opened all the way so the spring can travel. I was initially worried about strength, but the ski was plenty strong afterwards so there is no worries there. The advantages of doing this: you drop quite a bit of unsprung weight off the front of the sled, generally get a little wider ski for more floatation and of course they slippery plastic that wears better than steel. These skis dramatically changed the machine, probably the biggest single improvement ever made to it. They worked extremely well and I was very happy with the results and believe it was well worth the effort. Good luck. G.
 

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you could try the set that yamaha had availible for the et410. they had a whole bunch of holes in them for different skis/wearbar aplications.

could also just get a universal set and drill your own holes to match the skis.
 
You could also obtain and modify and old set of V-Max-4 skis. That would be a quick easy fix for a light weight ski with plastic skin. G.
 
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