I’m not sure if I should post Part 2 here or start a new post.🤷🏻‍♂️
Part 2
I bought an aluminum chaincase with the drum brake, hoping it would be nice to be able to change gearing more easily than in my steel chaincase experience. I had an Elan SS aluminum secondary pulley and disc brake I thought would fit, but the aluminum chaincase I got had the smaller upper bearings. So, I got a ‘73 Olympic 440 aluminum case with the aluminum pulley and disc brake on it. (Thanks Brian!). Next, my 294 had the Moto Ski engine mount on it, so I had a parts Elan 250 twin with the engine and chassis mounts. Bolted it up and it fit nicely on the chassis. I tried the chaincase on the sled, but there wasn’t enough room for the wider, deeper aluminum one. I tried clearancing it with the ball peen hammer, but it wouldn’t work. I ended up cutting the bottom piece out and welding in a 399 piece from a chassis I bought. This with a bit of hammer work allowed the case to fit in. Next, I extended forward the angle steel that the original case upper mounts were fastened to And drilled new holes in the bottom for the two lower chaincase mounts. I added a 1/8” thick piece of aluminum behind the front most lower bolt hole and glued it in there as I had to fasten it in the thin part of the chaincase due to the gas tank proximity.

 

Part 3
Next, I thought the ‘78 Elan with the 120” slide suspension would be really nice, based on my experience swapping a 106” slide setup into my Elan. Guillaume from GB had a listing for new 2 ply tracks with a 1” lug, so I looked for and found a 77 Olympic 340 with the 120” Torque Reaction suspension. I took some measurements for mounting points and proceeded to remove it and replace all the bearings. I drilled the front holes and popped the springs on temporarily to get an idea for rear arm mounting height. I grabbed a short seat from an ET and used it as a rough idea of what I was looking for. I ordered a track from Guillaume. I wanted to save some weight and get shorter, better turning skis, so I decided to use Elan skis. This also makes it easy to add shocks, which makes controlling the sled in bumps much easier I found. The problem was the larger chaincase would interfere with the length of the original steering arms. The Elan spindles from 74 up are forged and offset to widen the stance a bit. Their upper spline design was too short to mount the Elan clamp on steering arms and for the Olympic spindle tubes. 1973 Elan twin spindles had the widest offset of any Elan and shorter tapered spline mount steering arms, very similar to the original 1969 long arms. These clear the chaincase and allow you to use Elan tie rod ends. You must use center mount left and right tie rods as the 69 layout did. The long left to right tie rod hits the aluminum pulley during turns. But you can use the ‘69 short tie rods and tie rod ends, as used on ‘73 Elans.

 

Part 4
I wanted to find an Elan SS tuned muffler for the sound and the ease of fitting it into the stock 12/3 exhaust out the bottom of the tunnel. As most of them are rusted through it took awhile to find a good one. I ended up buying a complete nice ‘76 Elan that had a tuned muffler and sold it to a friend who had a nice 73 Elan twin with muffler. I spent most of this past winter getting the chaincase alignment, muffler mounts, clutch support rod mount and solving all the clearance things that happened. The heim joint tie rod ends only fit on the outer ends of the tie rods. They bind if mounted on the inners when turned.
I decided to brush paint the chassis and use an original condition cab as I wanted this to be a driver, yet be reliable. I couldn’t figure out the proper clutch offset due to the mixing of parts from different sleds. Also, the inner sheave of the engine clutch on the 294 seemed to be out about a 1/4”. This I figured was to accommodate the wider tunnel found on the Moto Ski Capri I harvested the engine from. I installed a Comet Duster I had and the offset seemed very close to what I wanted to start with. I rebuilt the Tillotson and set the pop off pressure. I had cleaned out the original tank and left some motor oil in it over the two years. Wanting to avoid troubles, I drained it after adding a gallon of straight gas and swishing it around. Next, I wanted to install a check valve on the fuel line in the tank. That doesn’t fit in either of the ‘69 fuel fittings in the tank. So I put a length of Mechanic’s wire down the fitting hole and fished it up the fill tube. I tied a foot long fuel hose with the check valve in it to the wire and pulled it up through the fuel fitting. I trimmed it lengthwise a bit and fit it over the steel tube.

 

Awesome build! Great skills