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Rebuilding the 1976 Polaris TX 340 Snowmobile

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Reviving The Faithful Sled From Decades Past!!

Source: Dave Hagen
10 May 11

My 1976 Polaris TX 340 ran faithfully for a couple decades and won the “endurance” award at the Big John Expeditions by running solidly from BJ #4 in 1978 all the way through BJ #17 in 1991! That’s 14 grueling annual excursions without failing or being pulled off the trail. We did have an on-trail intervention in 1990 when the mounting bolts threaded themselves out of the track assembly, but that was fixed easily after we found the bolts still held in their holes even though the track was riding completely on the tunnel housing.

After I moved up to my sled for the next decade, the Indy Trail 1986 in the year 1987 (I don’t buy these expensive toys new, you realize), my son Jeff started riding the trusty old 1976. He handled it like a pro!!

Since it sat around for an 18-year period from 1991 to 2009, it ‘weathered’ and ‘behaved’ badly due to the outright neglect. It seemed that the machine deserved better attention than that, so we rebuilt it completely with a new molded hood, freshly-printed decals (applied at the Kofstad Sign Shop), and a full set of rustproofed, rebuilt and repainted parts salvaged off of this sled and a sister unit that we bought for parts. We combined 2 engines into one because the lower seal was shot on the original. We even found a shop in St. Paul that did an excellent job of Chrome Plating the shock absorbers. As always, the main mechanical wizard on the project was my trusty brother Jon!!!

If you have a video playing software you could join us on a chronology of this 5-year restoration by clicking here: