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Family is the fuel that powers this team of vintage snowmobiles.
Dustin Vipond grew up watching his father drag race vintage sleds, and now he drag races them himself with his wife and daughter. With four sleds in the lineup for this past year, plenty of new hardware was brought in by the old iron.
The sleds being run by the Vipond Racing team include a pair of 1973 Arctic Cat Cheetahs, one being a 440 and the other being a 340, both being fan-cooled. These sleds are typically raced by Shelley, the mother, and Hayley, the daughter, respectively. Vipond himself runs a pair of sleds, a 1973 Arctic Cat El Tigre 440, and a super unique 1971 Arctic Cat EXT 440.
Together, they have toured everywhere in Saskatchewan from near home in Wymark and Kindersley and all the way up north to Prince Albert. While they only joined the Saskatchewan Vintage Snowmobile Association four years ago, this family unit has quickly become a staple of many venues.
Vipond has worked countless hours in his shop to make sure these machines keep running. While the mechanisms themselves are fairly simple compared to a modern sled, they take intricate care to ensure they keep running in good order.
"That's honestly kind of the nice part about these is that they are so simplistic," said Vipond. "It seems like there's very little to go wrong, but with anything that's 50 years old, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. So we carry quite a bit of spares with us."
Under the hood, Vipond's El Tigre features direct air intake, with no filter or box of any kind, feeding directly into a Kawasaki-built T7 series engine. An interesting feature of this engine is that it has two spark plugs per cylinder. While there are only two cylinders, this setup enables greater power, garnering a literal better bang for your buck.
"They were known as a quad plug engine," shared Vipond. "They're fairly unique only to the El Tigres and the race models sleds. So they're easily identified anyways in those circles."
In terms of horsepower, Vipond estimated that this engine produces between 48 to 52. While that might seem small in today's world of production cars that come out of the factory with 600 or 800 horsepower, these retro snowmobiles can still lay down the speed due to their small stature. The fastest of Vipond's vintage sleds is the El Tigre, aided by dual carbs and a tuned exhaust pipe.
"It was pretty much as close to a race sled as you could buy off the showroom floor back then without actually getting into the race program," said Vipond.
In terms of raw speed, the old tiger can under ideal conditions get up to speeds of 80-90 miles per hour. Vipond admits that he himself only ever gets up to roughly 74-78 miles per hour during race days on track lengths between 500-600 feet.
Vipond keeps the sled stock because all the racing his family does is stock racing. Also, he grew up watching his dad race on vintage sleds. Vipond still pays homage to his father with his 'Wild Bill' stickers, which was a moniker his father used while racing.
Viponds other sled was only just recently added to the roster. He discovered it in a collection of various vintage snowmobiles he purchased last year. What makes the Artic Cat EXT 440 special is it may be one of if not the rarest sleds you can buy. Only 443 were ever built.
"They built these to get around back in the 70s when they were doing factory race programs," explained Vipond. "You had to have 'X' amount of a sled produced or you couldn't race it. So they built these bullets to race and sold the bare minimum out to consumers so that they were able to continue the race program."
It took some work to get the old sled in racing condition. Vipond has gone to great lengths to ensure the sled is as original as possible.
"I've been kind of chasing it for a few years and finally was able to buy it," said Vipond. "Allegedly it was raced back in the day, but we kind of went through it and freshened it up."
Under the hood, it features an earlier version of the 440 air-cooled engine found on the El Tigre. The air cooling on this engine is such a prominent feature, that the cooling fins on the engine are visible through the giant hole in the hood.
"It was kind of an idea they had for some extra cooling," shared Vipond. "Why bother with the big air intake in the hood when you can just hang the motor out of the hood itself?"
Being an earlier version, this engine only features a single spark plug per cylinder. The twin cylinders are accompanied by a very rare twin crossover exhaust system.
"These could have been ordered with three different types of exhaust on it," said Vipond. "And this is the rarest and most powerful version on this one."
At some point in the previous five decades, somebody did upgrade the sled with a set of Mikuni carburetors.
Growing up never being allowed to touch his grandfather's 1974 El Tigre, it only makes sense that he has a collection of seven of them.
"It was just a beautiful sled and I was never really allowed to ride it. That's probably why it was beautiful," laughed Vipond. "But I always loved that sled. I found one for sale here 12 or 14 years ago and that kind of rekindled it for me."
His collection doesn't end there. Vipond was certain that he had fewer than 100 sleds in his collection, but the number is beginning to trend in that direction. Each time he finds one worth resurrecting, it begins the process again of finding parts, making and utilizing contacts, and diagnosing what does and doesn't work, and what can and cannot be saved.
"Anybody that's got any interest in it, and especially if anybody that wants to get into racing or vintage riding, there's no cheaper way to do it," said Vipond. "I've raced pretty much everything with wheels or tracks and I've honestly never had as much cheap fun as these vintage snowmobile races."
Vipond also enjoys the fact it gives his family an experience to bond over. His daughter enjoys the thrill of the sport so much that there is plans to build a slightly more powerful sled for her to race in the next year or two.
"Honestly, some weeks, it's the only time we get to spend together," said Vipond. "It's nice that we can just load these up and we head off on a little mini holiday for the weekend."
Next year, Hayley plans to continue pursuing her education after high school. Race weekends will become all the more important if she decides to take her courses in another city.
For now, if anyone sees Vipond on his black and green machine, they are encouraged to ask about the sleds, the sport, and how they can get involved.
Under the Hood is powered by Great West Auto Electric, your local Bumper to Bumper dealer in Swift Current. Long live your car.