I recieved an update (last week) from Nate Hansen from Utah State and the success of their electric snowmobile which just competed this month.   I will include a snip at the end of this to list their achievments and hard work.  I so enjoy getting the good reports where everything is just riding right as rain.  But then I get this email today from Nate that has a bad subject line.  The theme to Jaws starts playing in my head, DaDom, DaDom…

I open the email and it has just one or two lines and an attachment.  It said this is what happens when a belt breaks…  8^ 0  I downloaded the pic and, well, it’s horrible!  THOSE AGGIE BASTARDS KILLED MY..THEIR MOTOR, AHHHHH!  In forklits the biggest killer is low batteries, with EV’er it’s clearly over-reving the armature!  I’ve ordered in some Kevlar and will begin doing some comm banding and see what that will add to the commutators ability to handle these ”accidental” but damaging rpm’s.  On another unhappy note I recieved the first armature I had done, come back due to the back knuckle windings lifting.  This one was basically a standard banded armature.  Let me tell you I bad-ass-banded this puppy good and gave it a dip and bake and will get it balanced up.  Anyway I got to see a couple more reasons why these motors need to be as banded as possible for anyone pushing the higher rpm’s.  The destructo pic can be seen here in the Hall of Flame Album 8^ (

Hello All-
The Utah State University Electric Snowmobile Team has impressively and successfully competed in the SAE Clean Snomwobile Challenge 2006 in Houghton, MI. We dominated our competition and won every category that we were comparatively scored in.  Our team won every award that we were eligible for, including: Best Zero-Emmissions Design, Best Zero-Emmissions Range, Best Zero-Emmissions Overall, and also a “Rookie of the Year” award.

Our electric snowmobile competed head to head with gas powered snowmobiles in every event, and the judges were impressed with our performance. The only area in which we were not competitive was in range. We demonstrated a range of 9.5 miles, which was two miles further than any other attending electric snowmoblie traveled. In all other areas (handling, design, practicality, comfort, noise, etc.) our snowmobile performed very respectively, many times surprising the judges with it’s level of performance.