Who needs snow? [redneck alert]
These guys don't
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2...doors/od01.txt
Go ahead and wait for snow to fire up your snowmobile.
These people refuse to.
Some snowmobilers have been starting their machines since September and taking off across barren fields.
Granted, they can't go too far - 500 feet is about the limit before the machines start to overheat.
But that's far enough for someone like Tom Scheffer to get up to 98 mph on his sled.
And it took him just 5.5 seconds to do it.
Scheffer, of Huson, won his class last Sunday at the second of three Montana Snowmobile Racing Association grass drags scheduled for this fall (the final race is Sunday in Corvallis).
"I've always raced," said Scheffer. "Stock cars, motocross ... I love the competition and the speed. I can't get away from it."
There were about 150 entries, from as far away as Washington and Utah, at Sunday's races. For some, it's a weekend diversion. For a few, it's more serious.
"There are a few who put a lot of time and effort into it and are very competitive," Scheffer said. "There are eight to 10 of us who duke it out pretty regularly."
The serious ones invest up to $40,000 in their machines turning them into drag racers; Scheffer estimates he has $15,000 to $20,000 in the 290-horsepower sled he's custom-built.
It's not an absence of snow that hampers the snowmobiles, Scheffer said. It's the warmer temperatures that make it easy for engines to overheat.
So as soon as their brief rides are finished, racers pack bags of ice under their hoods to cool things down.
Snow is needed to lubricate the hyfax, the plastic component that fits to the slide rails and runs directly against the metal clips on the track.
Racing without snow "wears on that a bit," Scheffer said. "But it's no big deal. Those are cheap to buy."
Indeed, snowmobiling in the middle of winter can potentially do as much harm to the hyfax, if temperatures are extremely cold and snow particles too fine to produce enough water for lubrication.
And so last Sunday, the starting lights for a drag race counted down, and snowmobilers kicked up a cloud of dirt and rocks and rocketed off through an alfalfa field on a farm belonging to Thomas and Virginia Scheffer, Tom Scheffer's grandparents.
The toughest part about grass drags is finding places to do it, Scheffer said.
"We really appreciate the people who let us race," he said. Grass drags are a fall sport because farmers' fields aren't established in the spring, and it's too hot to run the machines in the summer.
Scheffer's gotten up to 114 mph in 4.7 seconds on a modified chassis built for racing, a state record.
Such sleds remain popular in the Midwest and East, but "have died out around here," Scheffer said. People rarely do any mountain riding on them because "they're just so high-strung and high-maintenance. They're a lot of work and a lot of money."
But a lot of speed in 500 feet.
And that's the appeal - snow or no snow.
