well, after a decade of not riding consistently I managed to pull a serious amateur mistake and misjudged a road approach. Both my 81 invaders and my asses are pretty beat up. I'll spare you pictures of my ass and just show the sled though.
Backstory: I've had this 81 invader since ~2008. Started running it again this winter and recently noticed the track had some hang up. looked at the track and it was getting chewed up in one spot. Tried to figure out why, adjusted the tension but couldn't get it to track straight. It wasn't TOO bad, and my other invader had a broken tie rod at the time, and the Wife wanted to ride (since apparently I live in fricken Miami judging by the amount of snow we have...), so I took it out for a short jaunt. Misjudged an approach and REALLY tweaked the back end. rode it home. Got it into the garage and started dissecting it to find that the track was getting chewed up REALLY quickly now, and that I was missing a bolt in the front sway arm, where it attaches to the pull cord side of the slide rails. Also found a nasty gouge where the spring was clearly rubbing into the rail, indicating that it had been missing this bolt for a while. Pics attached.
I have a few questions.
1) In your opinion, is this tunnel salvageable? my gut says "absolutely", but I have no frame of reference for how touchy they can be with respect to being "straight"
2) Is the slide rail setup salvageable? It's definitely been torqued a tiny bit, but were talking less than a millimeter of deflection from corner to corner. The real area of movement is that missing bolt, which was clearly the track running problem in the past. Any idea if I can simply stick in that missing bolt, maybe give a light tweak and put it back together?
3) Speculatively, would this be a good opportunity to retrofit a different track? I've always loved the idea of building a "Mountain" invader (long track w/ paddles, raised clearance trailing arm/IFS, build a slightly hotter 440 and clutch/tune for higher altitude riding the in the black hills). Something like that crazy red IFS invader that I've seen floating around. If i went this route... I would likely make it a full deal and extend the tunnel, cut the belly pan for some better suspension etc... There would be significant cost involved, but considering the work that will be going on no matter what.... Maybe this is the universe telling me "Build that Invader mountain concept sled. Do it."
Subquestion 3a) How big of paddles can an invader handle? I know I've heard people put 0.75" on, but at some point there's only so much clearance between the drive cogs and the housing?
Thoughts?
Topic: sooooo... hit it with a mallet er what? (Read 1691 times)