January 15, 2018

Inviting Quirkiness – the 1987 Yamaha Inviter

By Steve Adams.

Hello everyone. My name is Steve Adams and I own AMF GROUP in Grand Falls-Windsor, NL. We are a full service shop with everything you need to maintain, modify and restore your motorsports equipment. We do mechanical work, machine work, powder, ceramic and speciality coatings, paint work, full restorations, suspension build ups/setups. We also sell parts, accessories and clothing for every season.

Throughout this season, we’re going to share some of the cool restoration projects that we have on-going. I have been working on this for awhile now and I’m excited to bring you our first feature story called “INVITING QUIRKINESS”. Named as such for obvious reasons.

We pulled this little gem into the shop this fall to have a riding restoration done. Meaning, not a frame off restoration, but a general “freshening” of everything. This little scoot has a soft spot for me personally as a close family friend had one as her last snowmobile before passing away. So, this one was an exciting little venture. This sled came from Ohio and was stored for years, more on that in a moment!

So, Here’s how the little thing looked when I came into the shop.

The amount of dirt from being stored in a barn is not well shown in the photos…but let’s just say it was a little piggy when it got here. The owner wanted it ready to ride for this winter. I was happy to oblige. I don’t think he is expecting the level of clean that this machine is at the moment.

So onto getting it moveable and rideable again. First up. Getting the little 300cc single cylinder liquid cooled mill running. As it sat, it was not happy. I pulled the carb to see what was up and let’s just say, it was a shock to what I saw. I will let the pictures do the talking!

This is what happens when you live in a barn. Mice and rats climb into your orifices and leave “treats” for you!

After scooping the poop and almost throwing up while doing it, I got the carb into the ultrasonic machine. This machine is a little gem as it can clean all sorts of things very easily and thoroughly. After the bath in the ultrasonic machine, the carb was as good as “new”. There was some wear, and I would have loved to have gotten a new one, but they are very rare now. So, this one will have to do.

After getting everything back together on the motor, it was time for a test fire. I primed the engine 3 times before it ran by itself. Good. It’s running. On to the exterior.

The exterior was “rotten” from barn life. So I took to my personal bag of tricks for cleaning broke out a bit of this and a bit of that. Many hours later…..Lots of elbow grease and hard work, the little gem was shiny as new! Removing the old trail passed from previous states were a pain, but in the end I got them all off and the entire sled now is like new.

As for control. The skis were worn completely through. So A new set were in store, as well as new carbides. The track was destroyed, so another call to Recreation Supply Co. sourced us a brand new one. While the skid frame was out of the sled, I replaced all bearings in the wheels as well as 2 new metal wheels to replace cracked plastic “cheapies” that were installed in place of the original metal ones.

Finally. The Inviter was done. I took it up the driveway for a quick scoot to make sure everything was functioning as should be. It was! I have to say, this little sled was far ahead of its time. It makes for a great groomed trail sled. You can literally ride for hours on the groomed trail and enjoy every second of it.

The owner of this sled has told me he’s never ridden anything like it. He owns three of them, one is coming back into our shop for something very special in the near future. Stay tuned for that one. I hope you enjoyed this really brief and quick overview of how we brought this Inviter back to life.