Secondary Groomer – Dewey

44 thoughts on “Secondary Groomer – Dewey”

1. Thayne and Jason took Dewey from NL back to the Miller Farm in Solon. We started at the west side of NL and groomed trail 1 too Solon and then Trail 4 out the railbed to 4A out at 600 acers. We groomed 4A all the way back to trail 4 by Solon. That trail looked great because it had about 4-5 inches of snow in it. Going to be very cold tomorrow so will not groom till Friday. If there is enough snow left after the wind tomorrow I will use Louie and groom to Sutliff.

   Happy riding and thank you Jason it was nice to have someone with me.

2. Dewey is at Mel’s and ready to go. Mel took it out for a while during the last snow and it is running good. Mel is working on improving the pan with a new powered belt. With our snow conditions this is a different approach.

3. Dewey was out around Solon today. Trail 5.

4. Dewey is at the farm. It is parked outside. It’s on the north side of the parking area north of the two red buildings. Kind of hard to miss.

   I groomed the trail south down Dubuque street in North Liberty. Everything is good. The only bad spot is across from South Slope. The drifts there were simply too deep. I could have got through where the trail should go but I would have made quite a mess of the plowing job they did on the sidewalk. I groomed to the west side of those trees instead.

   Everything worked great on the way over. The lack of snow is the issue.

   When I was coming east on trail 5 from the 5-6 intersection there simply wasn’t any snow on the field. On a whim I drove Dewey down the south side ditch next to 140th street just to see if there were any big washouts or obstructions. It had plenty of snow but had not been mowed so there was trash growing up in there. Once I realized we could use that ditch I went ahead and groomed it.

   A note to the groomer operators:
   That ditch has three driveways between highway 1 and the crossover point by Milo’s. The one at the top of the hill on 140th does not have a tube. The drive at the intersection of trails 5 and 6 does along with the one further west where we cross 140th to the north. Both of those tubes are on the south side of the ditch itself. When coming to these two drives simply turn to the road side of the ditch and you’ll climb right up and over. The slopes are not bad at all. The sleds had already been running the ditch west of the trail 5-6 intersection anyway. I went back Sunday morning with steel posts, found the tube ends and marked them with caution signs.

   The track tension seemed good. We may want to look at that again after it’s run once more. I did tighten the left steering bad two flats. It seemed weak compared to the right. It seems like it has always been a little weaker.
   The unit has good power. The new carb is working well. It does whistle more at part throttle than the old one but the radio will take care of that. The reworked track bars really did the trick. It climbs great now. I had no issues with getting stuck and it went up and over everything with ease.

   I put in ½ quart of trans oil before I began. It and the engine oil were fine when I finished the day.