Powder riding power loss

[Mtnviper]

I decided to build a deflector instead of using the Mountain Max one.
Here are a few pics of my home made deflector. I made it fairly short so that there is less chance of the back of the ski clipping it when the suspension compresses. (hopefully it's long enough to be effective!)
I made it out of a piece of 4" aluminum pipe. The drilled/tapped some mounting holes and bolted it on with stainless steel machine screws. Once I had the mounting and overall shape figured out, I used a rotary cutter and die grinder to "hog it out" and make it lighter.

Bill

 

[YamahaTim]

Nice job, however how would that work? So the angle will stop snow, what if you hit something not only are you going to Bend that metal your going to bent the muffler as well as possibly rip the existing rivets and rip apart the plastic underneath. To me it's not that at all causing this problem, it's snow hitting the radiator causing steam and choking or bogging the motor down. When I'm hitting a 4 foot drift at WOT busting through the snow exhaust is coming out at a pretty good rate while my front end is in the air and then starts to bog down, how is snow stuck in the exhaust? My sled is bogging on the steam created by snow from the drift hitting the radiator. Not saying that your theory isn't valid, just saying it doesn't make sense. There has been several times I'm sitting on powder and take off and it's fine. It's only when I bust through a drift or in a lot of deep snow. And usually my front end is off the ground, while snow is hitting my radiator causing steam then she'll bog or choke out, until the steam is gone, then she runs great again. And all that while at WOT. No way is snow going to clog the muffler. Most of the time it happens to me while busting through a big drift or road approach and most of the time my front end is in the air. When going through deep snow your at or pretty close to WOT so how could snow plug the muffler? I have had a lot of snowmobiles and a lot of them had the exhaust in the same place and this has never happened. Because all of those sleds have never had a radiator in front. The fix for this problem is a different air box, or the K&N filters, or no radiator and add tunnel coolers. And if you had one of those fixes the problem would go away. IMO

 

[09nytro]

I decided to build a deflector instead of using the Mountain Max one.
Here are a few pics of my home made deflector. I made it fairly short so that there is less chance of the back of the ski clipping it when the suspension compresses. (hopefully it's long enough to be effective!)
I made it out of a piece of 4" aluminum pipe. The drilled/tapped some mounting holes and bolted it on with stainless steel machine screws. Once I had the mounting and overall shape figured out, I used a rotary cutter and die grinder to "hog it out" and make it lighter.

Bill

Looks good Bill !
Have you went out and rode with it on yet ?
I put a MM one on mine !

 

[FAMILYMAN]

The skid plate I have has a small raised area near the exhaust. It must be helping, stopped noticing it.

 

[Mtnviper]

I haven't rode with it yet, I was going to try it out last weekend but the weather (pouring down rain) was bad. I'm hoping to go tomorrow and try it out. How effective is it? Might be tough to tell now that it's mostly spring snow conditions, I figure that it can't hurt though. It's an experiment and because I made it out of scrap that I had laying around, I have almost no money invested in it.

Due to the angle, rounded shape and how it sits flush with the bottom of the side panel I'm pretty sure that I won't tear it off! If nothing else it should help protect the muffler outlet from getting dented more that it already has!


Bill

 

[Mtnviper]

The deflector seems to be working! We had a couple feet of fresh wet heavy snow on Sunday and when I side-hilled on the right the throttle response is good. (same as when side-hilling on the left)
One side effect that I noticed is that the exhaust is slightly louder. I suspect due to the snow being cleared away and not muffling the sound as much.

I haven't noticed much steam like Tim was talking about, but then we don't have dry power as often here either so that could be why.
I suspect steam in the intake and exhaust back pressure due to snow could be two separate concerns.
Bill

 

[NOS-PRO]

Looks good!

 

[snowriderjoe]

I experienced the same issue last weekend riding in fresh deep wet snow. I was thinking the same thing about the exhaust being plugged by the wet snow. Made me wish I had my Nytro rear exhaust back. Never experienced this loss of power with my Nytro.

 

[hardcor_32]

Can you order new MM deflectors still? Or just have to find used ones?

 

[TD Max]

Hopefully Yamaha and/or Cat are listening.