Posted by David Sherman on Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 1:56PM :
Before you get all excited, I passed on this one, but here's the info. It's in Spanaway. It was on craig's list, but the listing seems to have expired. The phone number is 253-882-7849. The woman is moving out and her ex left a big pile of junk that she wants rid of. Nothing else that was left in the pile was interesting. He still had it as of yesterday.
It is indeed a very old Tucker Sno-Cat. On the door it says it once belonged to Timberline Lodge. It has two pontoons in the rear, and may have had skis in the front. It's not a "Sno-Kitten". All the windows, gages and interior are long gone. It has no tracks. The pontoons may be useable but the drive sprockets are hopelessly worn out. The pontoons could be rusted out on the bottom where they've sat on the ground for a long time. The rear axle, which may be Dodge corporate, may be useable. The transmission cover is missing and everything inside is heavily rusted. There is no transfer case, as it's a rear-only drive. The aluminum body shell is mostly there. The steering column is there but there's no linkage connecting it to however it used to steer.
The engine is a small flat-head V-8 with the distributor mounted on front presumably directly coupled to the camshaft. The kid says it's a Ford, but I wouldn't know for sure. All the spark plugs are smashed, the air cleaner is missing, and there are several minor places where the engine is open to the weather, but the heads are on it. One head has been welded. The throttle body of the carb is there, but the upper part is missing. The engine could be a rebuildable core. I think it could be of interest to somebody building an old-school street rod.
I was going to take it if it had two good pontoons, a transfer case, and a dodge motor, but with the pontoons being the only useable thing, and me having to borrow a car trailer, drag it up on the trailer, and haul it 500 miles, I decided to pass on it. The people are clearly getting squeezed out by the gentrification of the suburbs as everything around them is big new subdivisions of tract houses. The woman who owns the place was gone when I was there, but a bunch of kids including her son were commencing what looked like it was going to be a pretty active Saturday night party. The kid's a good guy and quite knowlegable about the various rigs his old man left behind.
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