Have any of you ever seen one of these? It’s called SnowJob and was sold by Advanced Recreation Equipment of Mountain View, California in 1973. The conversion is a twin track assembly that your motorcycle bolts into after removing the wheels and it looks like the chain is used to drive the tracks. The motorcycle tilts within the tracks which would give the front ski the ability to carve through the turns. From the coupon in the magazine ad, you fill in the blank and indicate what kind of motorcycle you have, perhaps they would make one to order.
Did these ever make it on the market? Did they ever sell? Have you seen one? The photos in the ad show a Kawasaki bolted into one so at least that one was built. I didn’t find the company with a quick search so it didn’t seem to make it unless it merged or was bought by someone else.
The conversion looks like it might have worked to some degree and the twin tracks would probably keep you upright. So, do any of these still exist?
Here’s the ad:
Related: Ktrak Rear Drive Kit
Keith says
Aw , I want one.
todd says
considering there is a plastics fabricator still at that adress since 1975 maybe you should give them a call. Ask for Larry Stock, he probably worked at A-REC before he bought the company and called it Polymer Plastics Corp.
-todd
todd says
Googling a little further reveals the company was a victim of the oil embargo (at least recreational vehicle sports were). In fact their venture capitalists, Kleiner-Perkins-Caufield & Byers, considered them a loss leader…
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Kleiner-Perkins-Caufield-amp;-Byers-Company-History.html
-todd
john says
A blast from the past. It takes me back to the winter of 73 when my friend was looking for a new bike and one of our friends told us about a 72 Norton Commando that was mounted on one of these kits. Long story short he still owns that bike despite all my attempts to wrest it from his grip.
todd says
Imagine being sold a snow job from a company named A Wreck. No wonder they were’nt too successful.
-todd
brad says
Hi, I just stumbled onto your site and wanted to let you know that I own a Snow Job. While I have not mounted a bike on it, I’ve been using the track and bogie wheels for a mini-snocat I built. However I have all the original parts of the Snow Job including the wonderful fiberglass body.
Brad
philip says
I rode on one of these in 1972. Our family were friends with Derek Hine, who invented this. We went up to the snow with them that year and he had this on a trailer and we took it out into a snow field. I was only 5 a the time so I dont remember the details of how it rode but we thought it was the greatest thing. The company went under, as you could see, but he went on to success with another company that build robotic arms to handle the manufacture of silicon wafers. He is also an avid pilot, built himself a Lancair. He is also still heavily into motorcycles, owns at least one vincent black shadow.
RICK BRETT says
I also own one, I need to restore it but I also have photgraphs of a snowjob with a Kawasaki 350 Triple as the power unit.
Mark says
Awesome, I stumbled across this looking for info on adding a track to my Yamaha TW200. It looks like I will need to fab my own but if anyone has any tips I would very much appreciate it. Thanks.
PS maybe we can get Mattracks to produce one 😉
Rob R says
I worked at a motorcycle shop in Ottawa Ont Canada and we sold nortons triumph ducati jawa cz zundapp laverda and kawasaki also dki-doo. we then brought in this wonderful thing called a sno job 🙂 oh yea Iwas the one to uncrate it and mount a bike to it we had ordered a few hardware mounting kits one for a norton 750 one for kawa 750 H2 and one for a big horn (kawa 350 f9) we were going to mount the kawa 750 h2 but in the manual they said that it was capable of over 100mph 🙁 I put the 350 f9 on it because when you sit on it you are very high. after everyone had testdriven it we all agreed it worked great in deep snow and you could turn on a dime by leaning over and put the boots to it. wheelies well I guess you cant call them that but you bang out the clutch and you can yank the ski off the snow for quit a ways with the 350 on it wow ! wonder what the 750h2 would do? any way it was great in the bush and on small trails but when you got into top gear across yhe lake it wasent long befor you frozeup no wind block when youare sitting so high
it was fun in simpler times