Bolens Diablo Rouge and Hus Ski Discussion Forums

You are a true craftsman my friend

It is the crafting of parts and how they can be made with such minimal tooling that I enjoy so much.

Barrie2777 wrote:It is the crafting of parts and how they can be made with such minimal tooling that I enjoy so much.

Ditto

All back together and ready for sandblasting.

Back at it ...I held my breath and tackled the boggie wheels. Almost as bad as the Diablo boggie stations. These rubber wheels are sandwiched between two formed metal hubs which hold the bearings. One hub on each side and held together with 12 rivets of two different lengths. Each wheel is a tight fit on its shaft and held in place with a "C" clip.........and 50 years of rust.

This boggies must have had its bearing changed. The owner opted for the bolt fasterers rather than the "clean" rivet method.

There are two different thicknesses of boggie tires. The thick one takes two 6203 bearings while the others take only one. There are 6 single bearing boggies and two double bearing boggies.

An anvil made to conform to the inner shape of the hub was necessary to provide a solid surface to rivet against. It is also useful to hold the 6 short rivets in place when you turn the first hub over to assemble the other parts. Once all the short rivets were done , I inserted the long ones and secured them . This rivetting was done with an air hammer and a rivetting end identical to those used to rivet track cleats in place. This rivetting end had to be turned smaller at the tip so as to prevent damaging the hub whilst rivetting. OH what fun!!! Actually, it was about 5 minutes to assemble one boggie wheel. Several years ago I traded a Bombardier Olympique for two sets of NOS boggie tires for a 600 HUS-SKI. The hubs were powder coated.

With the boggies assembled, I'm ready to prepare the track. The inner race of each bearing was heated to allow it to slide easier onto the shafts.

This track is made with 3/8" (maybe thicker) belting and must weigh near 100 lbs with the metal ice cleats. Turning this over the small front cog may take a lot of power in very cold weather.