Vintage Mods & Restorations

09/14/2026

Haydays has come and gone and I am bummed I missed it. Lets see what I missed out on! Who found some sweet deals in the swaps? What was your favorite thing you saw? Post some pictures in the comments. 👇🏻

09/09/2026

Michael at Subzero stitch never ceases to impress me. The seat on this 99 was one of the most defining features that Dennis recalled when talking with him about this sled initially. Michael took the new modified pan I made along with the original foam and put together this absolute work of art. 🤯

08/23/2026

Well with the bellypan project underway, I figured I’d take this somewhat rare opportunity to peel back another layer on this project and give you all a look at just how cool these sleds are. I do think the factory-like hood and bellypan on these sleds especially. Cause many people to overlook them as modified Polaris based chassis.

08/18/2026

Here’s an odd one you may have forgotten about. Snowolverine was a company based in Sweden. Founded in 2003, the machines boasted some really cool features for the time. A tubular perimeter frame with carbon fiber body panels and tunnel skin, an adjustable position suspension seat, Ohlins shocks and an M10 rear suspension. The flagship model was advertised with an 1116cc turbocharged V-twin that was claimed to have produced around 120hp with a 485lb dry weight. There was also a 105 hp 600cc two stroke in the works but there is little information on that variant or the 792cc prototype seen in some of these photos. While little is known about the total number of sleds produced, there were at least a couple of working prototypes. If you look, you can find a few brief YouTube videos of them being ridden. In the beginning, there was a lot of excitement surrounding the project, there were even reports of negotiation between Wolverine and Redline Snowmobiles about potential partnership. Sadly, as we’ve seen with other new startups in this industry, funding seemed to be at the center of the demise of this project. Surrounded by allegations of fraud, misuse of investor funds and government grants, the company was gone around 2010.

08/15/2026

Here is the initial results from yesterdays scanning session. If you look closely at the first scan, you can see where David meshed in the undamaged section from my other bellypan. There is still a lot of work to be done to get this to be a useable model. But it’s encouraging to see it starting to come together.

08/15/2026

Back to the build content! and this one is a doozy… the belly pans on these Holz sleds are custom. Loosely based off of a Gen 2 Polaris (see comparison photo) they are much deeper behind the suspension well to accommodate for the low-mounted engines. Finding another one on a shelf somewhere is likely not going to happen. Unfortunately, the belly pan on this sled was by far the worst condition part of it. The previous owner heated the area over the clutch and molded it inward to clear the narrower suspension he was running. That paired with years of different engine and pipe combinations lead to multiple holes and melted spots. With no other options, I finally decided to jump in head first and take a shot at making a mold. During the week I started prepping everything to be 3D scanned, pulling off all of the heat tape, brackets, braces, shock tower covers and side rails. Tonight with my new found friend David Tanner, we spent close to a full 3 hours getting every little detail from both sleds. Luckily my 2000 J-arm sled has a very nice belly pan, hopefully allowing us to mesh the two scans together to come up with one very nice part. I’m not certain I’ll be able to pull this one off. But I’m sure going to try. Sorry this was a long, picture heavy post. But I hope you enjoy it!

08/12/2026

**Minnesota Friends**

I need some help. I am looking for names of plastic thermoforming companies who would have been producing snowmobile belly pans in the early 2000’s. So far I’ve talked with Sportech and Stern Industries/Axis North but I’ve not yet found what I’m looking for. Any help is appreciated!

07/31/2026

Trailing arm rebuild part 2: I received two sets of arms with this sled and obviously I chose to rebuild the worst of them first incase I screwed something up. This set was in much better shape so I had them stored away for safe keeping. Over the weekend I had gotten a little bit of a surprise on my porch, 3 more pieces of the custom-profiled chromoly tubing courtesy of Ryan Holz at HEI precision.  despite the heat, I got out in the shop tonight and began coping the tubes and getting everything prepped for another rebuild. I thought about trying to straighten these arms in a tubing roller, and I still may give it a try. But for now I’ll keep picking away using the same method as last time.

07/16/2026

It’s been HOT around here and getting the seat back from Subzero stitch was just what I needed to get me excited for winter. I’m not sure if Michael intended for me to geek out on the packaging material or not… but I definitely did. 🤓

07/11/2026