Some of you may remember some of my posts regarding a track sled I was building. Well, it's finally finished and I thought I'd share a couple pics on here. I'm pretty proud of how this one turned out. After using it a few times I have plans to tweak a few things during the off-season, but it's served me well so far during this stupid warm winter we've had here in Northeast Wisconsin.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, it's essentially a homemade SnowDog. It utilizes the track, suspension, chain case and drive axle from a snowmobile and is driven by a horizontal shaft engine. Some of the less custom models also reuse the aluminum tunnel of the snowmobile, but I wanted this one to be a little more custom so I built my own frame for it. This one has a Predator 224cc 6.6hp engine and a go cart torque converter. A couple chains and some sprockets and it goes about 17mph with the governor bypassed. I haven't put it to the test pulling a heavy load yet, but with the studded track and the pep it has shown so far, I don't doubt it could pull as many sleds as a guy cared to hook together, especially on the ice with little snow.

I built this one specifically for ice fishing. The benefit of a machine like this vs a snowmobile or atv is that it is lightweight (less than 250 pounds) and doesn't require a trailer. I have a 3" lift on my Ram 1500 and this thing still crawls right up an atv ramp into the bed. I also have a hitch hauler for it. Some of the places I fish, if you don't get there at 4am, you won't find room to park a trailer. No problem with the track sled. I've walked out a mile or more to fish before, but never again. Some of these track sleds are built on older snowmobiles with a bogey system that doesn't use the hyfax slides, and those could be used year round. Mine has slides so I'll only use it on the ice and snow.

I took this pic on a recent ice fishing trip. I've since installed the deck on the front part to hold my cooler and stop some of the snow from coming up. I'll also be adding an auger holder to the rack on the rear of the machine. But with the weather we've had and are forecasted, she might be done for the year unless I head north. I do plan to raise the drive axle to increase the attack angle and get that chain case a little higher off the ice, but that's more fabrication I'd rather do in the summer. I'm currently working on another one to sell, but with this weather I may just hold onto it until next winter. I'm seeing prices drop all around me and I think it's partly due to not being able to use them anymore this year. I figure I have right around $1,000 invested in this build and I lost track of hours spent on it a while ago.

Thanks for reading.



The color scheme is meant to match my ice shack, a Clam Ice Team edition. It's hard to tell in the pic, but the deck in the back is the same blue as the blue on the ice shack.

That’s great. What do you think the top speed is?

Good Work!!!

that looks great probably the heaviest thing you want on the ice this year .

That 17mph was what the speedometer app on my phone said I was going pretty much full throttle. That's about as fast as I would ever need/want to go, especially just standing in a plastic sled behind the thing. Because I bypassed the governor, I try not to run full throttle with it just because I don't want to damage the engine. But having the extra zip if I hit a slushy spot or need to climb a hill is nice. I could make it go faster or slower (and increase torque) by swapping out one of the sprockets for a smaller or bigger one, respectively.

I was surprised how well it spreads its weight, but it makes sense when you think about it. I had my other one in 18" of fresh snow and it only sank in about 6". I'm confident I could take it on 3-4" of good ice and not have any problems. It's a blast to drive around on, wish I had more of a chance to use it this year.

looks great WTG

That looks like a fun build- Nice work!

Looks like a fun project.

That's really neat looking. Looks like it could be real useful for getting around in the winter.

tlguy ..That is awesome. You did a great job with that build. I am a fa of the track machines and serves every purpose I need to get around when need one.

Thanks for sharing your build well done.

Nice build, thanks for showing us your project......jk

Pretty nifty

That is so cool! Nice job!

Nice!