If you haven’t been on the back of a snowmobile in a while, you might be surprised how much the machines have changed.
Over the decades, snowmobiles have gotten quieter, more fuel efficient, and cleaner.
Sled manufacturers want to keep improving in these areas, and one of the places they look for this innovation is in the next generation of engineers.
College students from the across the northern U.S. and Canada gathered in Eagle River this week to put their snowmobile ingenuity to the test.
Advance Snowmobile
One at a time, snowmobiles modified by students from nine universities are run through a course staged with microphones. It’s set up next to the Eagle River Snowmobile World Championships Derby Complex.
One of the challenges students are taking on in the Advance Snowmobile event is how to make the sleds quieter.
“This year we did a lot with our sound mapping. We have sound deadening on our snowmobile,” said Eli Winnie, a sophomore on the team from UW Platteville.
The sound test is just one of the challenges the sleds are put through over several days. There’s the cold start, acceleration, handling, and 100-mile endurance test.
“I did the 100-mile loop, and that was amazing. I rode this sled when it was stock, and then now where we have it, and it's a completely different snowmobile,” said Winnie. “It's really planted to the ground. It really handles nice. Just everything we did to it makes it more enjoyable.”
Each of the nine universities competing start with a stock snowmobile and then work to improve it in the areas that sleds tend to get the most complaints about- sounds, emissions, and fuel economy.
The Michigan Tech University team focused on emissions and sound with their sled.
“We've got a fully in-house made muffler, a custom calibration that we did all at school with our the equipment we had, and that's been our big focus, is trying to just make everything cleaner with the two stroke,” said MTU senior Ryan Gohde.
For many of the students like Gohde this event and the work leading up to is an opportunity to get hands on experience in the field they plan to make a career out of.
“I grew up snowmobiling. I've been riding sleds for 10 years, and I'm kind of a gearhead. I just like motors,” said Gohde. “I wanted to work on engines, and I wanted to learn how to really dial them in for whatever purpose we were targeting.”
In addition to the work on the snowmobile, the students also have to give two presentations, one on the technical side of things, the other on the business side.
“We're a technological university. Our presentations in the past have been very technical. This year where we took a little different approach, trying to really hammer at the rider experience and improving what the rider wants: fuel economy, rider fatigue, and just pretty hammered at making their riding experience better,” said MTU student Alex Discher.
Innovation in industry
While this is the inaugural Advance Snowmobile event, similar collegiate challenges have been held in the past in Eagle River and elsewhere in the U.S.
Local co-organizer Peter Jensen says the idea behind this event and others like it is to find a way to keep a sport going that is critical to the economy of places like northern Wisconsin, while trying to limit their environmental impact.
“The noise and emissions are one of the predominant things that make landowners object to snowmobiles being on their land,” said Jensen. “We're trying to fix that because we recognize that it's a fun sport, and it's really important to the economy in the Northwoods.”
Jensen says technology debuted at events like this in the past have made their way into modern snowmobiles.
“They get much better fuel economy. They're not nearly as smoky, so they're more pleasant to be around,” said Jensen. “They are in alignment with the modern technology where gives them the ability to start and run much, much better.”
That’s one of the aspects students appreciate most about the event, that what they’re working on is being seen by those actually in the industry.
“I just think that's a super cool way to kind of have these people work on passion projects that actually get seen by the bigger companies, as opposed to someone just working on it in the garage, and no one ever sees it out there in the world,” said Sam Sayas with the UW Platteville Team.
Discher also pointed out that it’s great to see competing businesses come together for an event like this to “help the innovation of the snowmobile industry.”
For snowmobile makers in attendance like BRP, Polaris, and Arctic Cat, an event like advance snowmobile is about keeping the industry healthy.
“It's a big community thing, and we need to keep that going, and we can't lose it. That's part of this competition,” said Artic Cat test engineer Yancy Gange. “We don't want to lose it. Getting everybody involved, schools involved, communities, colleges involved, it really helps.”
Polaris innovation engineer Laura Paul says events like this are great way to not only push innovation but recruit the talent creating it.
“You really can’t beat healthy competition, like, bar none,” said Paul. “It just really helps all these students and companies that come to support it build the network for both talent innovation and really being able to push each other. That's what really drives us to be as best as we possibly can be.”
Talent like Gohde who just accepted a job offer from Polaris.
“I largely attribute that to the opportunity to do this program,” he said.
Snowmobiling, like many winter sports, has faced challenges the last couple of years, with back-to-back low snow years across the upper Midwest, but with fresh snow and fresh ideas, this next generation of engineers is ready to keep the industry innovating.
