Building my M sled

Mjunkie · Aug 27, 2012

Rixster said:
Why dont you put a track under that thing ? I guess it all depends on rider size and what type of riding you do. But me being 240 lbs and riding alot of trees and boondocking I can even think about going shorter than 162. That 1300 is going to make a ton of power, but if you can get it to the ground it doesnt do much good. IMO.
Anyway, that is a sweet build, cant wait to see it finished. You may want to check the boys at powerhouse for your steering post. they might have one.

Probably the biggest reason why I'm doing this in the first place instead of just finding a used M1000 and just putting the BB in it without having to do any engine mount and others modification to make it work is because I don't want to go longer than 141". Yes, I could get the M1000 and cut it down to the length I want (141"), but with everything I've already done to this chassis over the years and having the suspension set up already the way I want it, it seems less of a hassle to me than the other way. I had a dragoncat motor before like you as you know and with the 141 I never had ANY trouble going where I wanted to. The lighter weight of the shorter track and the maneverablity of it are also things I'm NOT willing to give up in MY sled. Ask backcountrylife on here if his turboed 141's (that will put out much more power out than this build) if he has trouble getting the power to the snow. I'm not at all worried about it. I'm a strong believer (even though most disagree) that longer isn't necessarily better.

Thanks about the suggestion to check powerhouse, I'm going to take a closer look at my brothers M1000 steering post now to make sure that the other post is even going to work, and at this point I'm not as sure as I was. The mounting location is different and by moving it back (where it is on the M1000) I'm not totally sure there will be enough clearance against the gas tank, so I need to look at it closer first, otherwise I'll just have to fab something up.

Mjunkie · Oct 19, 2012

I finally have my motor mounts all fabbed up, the next step will be to get it to someone to have tig welded. Here's the cooler mount and the extra tab mount for the 3rd stud on the pto side. I'll drill the mounting hole in them after I have them welded in place, but I think they turned out pretty good for a guy in his garage with a block of aluminum, a chop saw with an aluminum cutting blade, a band saw, a set of files and some sandpaper!!

Mjunkie · Oct 19, 2012

The first pic is of my "linderman" style mount. The M7 bulkhead already has the round rubber mount to bolt thru so I didn't have to make one in the mount itself. It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted but it will work. The next pic is of the new steering post location. I moved it back about an inch, and put a flat piece of aluminum down to reinforce it. I got an idea from my wife when she bought some gel heel pad inserts for a pair of her shoes. They are about an 1/8" thick and are pretty close to the same size as the 3-prong mounting bracket for the bottom of the steering post. What I was thinking is that I'm going to sandwich one or two of these between the 3-prong mounting plate and the bulkhead. The gel (I'm hoping) will help limit the vibration going from the bulkhead up to the steering post and handlebars. I've read a lot about people adding extra mounts to the M1000 and almost everyone has said it made more vibration in the handlebars, so we'll see.

Mjunkie · Oct 19, 2012

Almost forgot, I picked up my twin pipes from Dale last weekend. They are used off of his personal sled, but in really good condition and they saved me some coin over new ones. I'm going to get the motor mounts welded and get the motor in so I can verify the pipes will fit ok and then I'm sending them to Swain-Tech to have them coated to keep the under hood heat down. Also I got my P85 clutch ordered and as soon as it comes in I'll send it off to fastrax to get the conversion done. Curt recommended MDS weights, but I'm also thinking about getting some Daltons since I really like the ease of putting in the set screws down the center of the weight, still not decided though.

Mjunkie · Oct 20, 2012

I had a bit more time this weekend than I expected to have so I got more done. The muffler exit hole on the M7 and M1000 are in a little bit different locations, so a couple months ago I found a used exhaust side plastic belly pan for a M1000 on ebay and was able to switch it over today.

I had a complete spare diamond drive with higher than stock M7 gears (don't remember the ratio off the top of my head) that I switched out with the stock geared one. I figure that the new motor should have plenty of torque to turn the higher gears, especially on a short 141. I can always switch it back if the others are going to work better.

I worked out what I needed to do with the steering post to clear the head. After moving the bottom mount to the bulkhead back about an inch, the connecting rod wouldn't clear the head, so instead of mounting the rod in between the tabs on the steering post, I'm going to mount it on top of the top one. I had to grind a little off the tab and the round radius rod end to just clear the gas tank. It's really close but I think it will work.

Lastly I put the motor in with just the pto mounting plate and my linderman style mount and fit the pipes on to make sure everything was going to clear everything else. It's going to be VERY tight in there, but everything fits without any major issues. I will have to make a better heat shield for the oil tank, but that will be easy, and with the pipes coated it shouldn't melt anything. Working on this thing on the mountain is going to be a b*tch to say the least so it had better just run :face-icon-small-hap:face-icon-small-ton

Mjunkie · Dec 5, 2012

A few more pictures on the progress I've made. I got the 2 motor mounts welded on, made a new bracket for the servo motor over by the clutches, and got the coils mounted. I stacked the coils one on top of another to save some room, hopefully it won't be a problem, but I'm not too worried about it.

Mjunkie · Feb 23, 2013

I've been too busy working on this thing to update the thread. The sled is now done though!!! I haven't ridden it yet, but hopefully will REALLY soon since it's driving me crazy sitting in the trailer. I got the P85 clutch back from Curt and the taper was wrong throwing the alignment WAY off. He confessed that mine is the first M1000 conversion he's done and he had the remains of a M1000 motor to take measurements off of but it was WAY off. He took care of me though, I sent it back to him with my weights and spring and he put it all together and had it rebalanced for me. He's a stand up guy who stood behind it for me. Anyways, I got the clutch back, got the pipes back from Swain-Tech and got to work. I kept the M7 handlebars and controls and now realize I would have been better off to just get some M1000 bars and controls since it took us (my dad and I since he's a lot better at electrical stuff than me) quite a bit of time to change connectors from the harness but it all turned out good in the end. Needless to say after lots of fabbing (including a few new heat shields), and a bunch of electrical work, the sled runs!! After the first pull though I knew I'd need to get some high strength recoil rope. I doubt the stock stuff would last very long. 4Z on here is hooking me up. With the BB you can choose a low, high, or ultra high dome insert and I'm glad I just went with the low. Dale did tell me that if it's very cold out, it's almost impossible to start the high compression ones. I've got the 1-7 code so the used exhaust probe must be shot so I'll be getting the AC/Delco one before I go ride it, but that should be it. One more weird thing is the fog lamp I have on the steering hoop will go out when I pull in the brake?! I'm not sure what's going on there, I'll have to look at the wiring again to see if I can figure that out. Any ideas on where to start would be appreciated though.

PICTURES!!

arcticcatwill · Apr 29, 2013

141?!?! holy crap that thing will rip!

Mjunkie · Apr 29, 2013

I didn't get to try it on the snow this season :face-icon-small-dis, I noticed when I first started it that my fuel pressure was low. I was only getting 38psi, and I'm not sure the boonie box would be enough to overcome that low of pressure. So to be safe, just last night I put in another M7 fuel pump I had laying around but didn't get it started to see if the pressure is higher on this one. If it doesn't make much more pressure I'll have to bite the bullet and get an aftermarket fuel pressure regulator.

All summer long I've got to start lifting weights because starting this beast is NOT easy. I got the other pump on and pulled it over several times, but with all the air in the system (from changing it) I didn't get any pressure on the gauge before I was exhausted and had to stop. Seriously, most of the time I can only pull it far enough to get only one pop. It's pump gas compression (still higher than a stock motor requiring at least 91 at my elevation), but with that many CC's it's a pain in the a$$ to pull. On cold days I'm definitely going to have to warm it up with the block heater just to get it to turn over. Should be fun though once it's running!!!

pinko · Apr 29, 2013

Mjunkie said:
I didn't get to try it on the snow this season :face-icon-small-dis, I noticed when I first started it that my fuel pressure was low. I was only getting 38psi, and I'm not sure the boonie box would be enough to overcome that low of pressure. So to be safe, just last night I put in another M7 fuel pump I had laying around but didn't get it started to see if the pressure is higher on this one. If it doesn't make much more pressure I'll have to bite the bullet and get an aftermarket fuel pressure regulator.

All summer long I've got to start lifting weights because starting this beast is NOT easy. I got the other pump on and pulled it over several times, but with all the air in the system (from changing it) I didn't get any pressure on the gauge before I was exhausted and had to stop. Seriously, most of the time I can only pull it far enough to get only one pop. It's pump gas compression (still higher than a stock motor requiring at least 91 at my elevation), but with that many CC's it's a pain in the a$$ to pull. On cold days I'm definitely going to have to warm it up with the block heater just to get it to turn over. Should be fun though once it's running!!!

Haha I know what you mean. A good buddy of mine ran a 1300 this year and he could almost pull the sled off the deck trying to start it cold.

Mjunkie · May 1, 2013

pinko said:
Haha I know what you mean. A good buddy of mine ran a 1300 this year and he could almost pull the sled off the deck trying to start it cold.

So what do you and your buddy think about how the 1300 runs?

4Z · May 1, 2013

I think Curt at FTX was selling recoil conversions to run the newer, larger recoil on the older motors. It looked like a plate with a bunch of holes in it. You might be able to talk him out if one cheap now that it is summer mode at FTX.... All the 1150 guys were running these.

Mjunkie · May 1, 2013

4Z said:
I think Curt at FTX was selling recoil conversions to run the newer, larger recoil on the older motors. It looked like a plate with a bunch of holes in it. You might be able to talk him out if one cheap now that it is summer mode at FTX.... All the 1150 guys were running these.

The 1300 is based off the M1000 that already has the larger recoil. Even with that it's a pain in the butt to pull over! If there were an even bigger one out there I'd do it in a heartbeat.

pinko · May 1, 2013

Mjunkie said:
So what do you and your buddy think about how the 1300 runs?

It worked pretty good. He had a bunch of other issues with the sled so he had a lot of downtime. I wouldn't have any problems putting my RKT ported M1 against it though. Although I'm 40lbs lighter than him. He ended up parting it out and checking a pro after he rode one.

Mjunkie · May 1, 2013

pinko said:
It worked pretty good. He had a bunch of other issues with the sled so he had a lot of downtime. I wouldn't have any problems putting my RKT ported M1 against it though. Although I'm 40lbs lighter than him. He ended up parting it out and checking a pro after he rode one.

Interesting... I've heard really good things about the RKT stuff, you'd (or I would anyway) think an extra 300 cc's would be tough to beat with just porting and pipe though. I'm not calling you a liar, don't misunderstand me, but maybe (hopefully for me) his set up on the 1300 wasn't dialed in all the way, and the extra weight definitely made a difference. Was your buddy running twin pipes? Was he running the stock airbox? Before the 1300, I had a dragoncat 1000cc (big bore M7 from Cutlers also), and Dale said from the 1000 to the 1300, I wouldn't gain a ton on the top end but would gain LOTS on the bottom end. I'm still convinced that the longer stroke of the M1000 bottom end and the extra cc's in bore will produce quite a bit more torque than the dragoncat motor I had before if not as much gain in hp, so I'm thinking that with the right gearing and clutching, I should see a fairly big improvement in performance. At least that's the hope!!!!! Thanks for your comments though. I haven't heard hardly anything on here about the 1300, and anything is appreciated.

pinko · May 1, 2013

Mjunkie said:
Interesting... I've heard really good things about the RKT stuff, you'd (or I would anyway) think an extra 300 cc's would be tough to beat with just porting and pipe though. I'm not calling you a liar, don't misunderstand me, but maybe (hopefully for me) his set up on the 1300 wasn't dialed in all the way, and the extra weight definitely made a difference. Was your buddy running twin pipes? Was he running the stock airbox? Before the 1300, I had a dragoncat 1000cc (big bore M7 from Cutlers also), and Dale said from the 1000 to the 1300, I wouldn't gain a ton on the top end but would gain LOTS on the bottom end. I'm still convinced that the longer stroke of the M1000 bottom end and the extra cc's in bore will produce quite a bit more torque than the dragoncat motor I had before if not as much gain in hp, so I'm thinking that with the right gearing and clutching, I should see a fairly big improvement in performance. At least that's the hope!!!!! Thanks for your comments though. I haven't heard hardly anything on here about the 1300, and anything is appreciated.

He was running a single SLP with the guts cut out of the pipe and Cutler intake. I'm sure there was probably more in it. One thing I forgot to add was I was running a 3" 162 and he had a 2.5" 162 extreme. Like I said I'm sure there was more to be had out of it but I couldn't believe mine after the porting and head.

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Building my M sled

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