Just ordered a bike engine

With spiked tires? OK.

My sister's was a Morris 1100. I hated riding in that POS. If you ran over a cigarette butt on the road, you could tell whether it was plain or filtered by how badly it bounced you around.

Dad was into gymkhanas and autocrosses in Arkansas. It's how I cut my teeth on auto repair. One of my first jobs was tuning his wire wheels on the Austin Healey 100-4. Super-mini rally, wot?

I'll bet!

Indeed.

- To change one's self is sufficient. It's the idiots who want to change the world who are causing all the trouble. --Anonymous

Studs didn't help at all on packed snow.

I cruised the snowmobile trails and frozen lakes on my dirt bike, with Trials Universal tires.

Nope - no spikes - no studs.

The old mini rode on 4 hockey pucks - most 1100s were hydrolastic.

We ran the Ontario Regional Navigation Rallye series and finished

4th, third, and second in the 3 rears we ran - and NEVER broke the car. My brother was a crackerjack navigator and we zeroed more check-points than any other driver the last 2 years. We also had the lowest powered car in the series

Actually on hard packed snow the studs were a small advantage -not nearly as much as on ice. I had studs on the '63 Valiant but they were outlawed in southern Ontario about the time I bought the Dart. I put a lot of miles on the Dart and wore out the snows and also wore out a set of chains. It was a '69 and it had over 200,000 miles on it when I sold it in '72.

A friend of mine has an '84 FXEF , Evo motor in a shovel frame with a cowpatty 4 speed trans . He had a real bitch of a time finding a replacement inner primary for it . We call it "Fat Bottom Girl" , but not when his wife is around ... it's her bike .

Perhaps not, but snow isn't nearly as slick as ice, from my very limited experience. BTDT, you can have it.

Interesting! What's different about the Trials tires? One would expect them to be a bit softer and stickier than regular knobbies, to do the slow crawls up the near vertical sides of rocks like a gecko. I don't think I ever touched tires on any of the few Trials bikes I've been around. The extreme (1.5-2" long) knobbies my friend, Ken, used on his Husky 400 "Trencher" were semi-hard. It was named when he kiddingly asked "Anyone need a trench dug?" as he proceeded to dig one with the brand new knobbie. I think debris was still falling a minute later, after he toggled the throttle from WFO to OFF. That was a scaryass bike with a 1/4-turn throttle which felt like a simple toggle switch. I thanked my lucky stars the one time I rode it when I found that the throttle was a reverse. You roll it forward to gas it. That allowed me to have more of a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. (infamously boring Disneyland ride) Ken won quite a few LoCal races on that beastie.

- To change one's self is sufficient. It's the idiots who want to change the world who are causing all the trouble. --Anonymous

I did some ice racing on Rose Lake in MIchigan in the late '60s. The classes had nothing to do with engine size. They were "engine over drive wheels," "front engine, rear wheel drive," and "studs." No studs were allowed in the first two classes, and no four-wheel drive.

The studs were a *huge* advantage. Before the cars raced, there were motorcycly races. Studs on both wheels, of course. The "studs" they used were sharpened bolts, with over an inch protruding through the tires, which had been drilled with holes for the bolts, and washers and nuts on the outside of the tires.

The fastest "engine over drive wheels" car was a '61 'Vette with the special tires Sears had made for the Pike's Peak Hillclimb. They were very soft, with crushed walnut shells mixed in with the outer rubber compound. Drive a mile or two on paved roads, and the walnut shells worked their way out. The result looked like coarse sponge rubber. With no shells visible, the race organizers allowed them.

The second-fastest was a '67 MG Midget with Pirelli Cinturatos, from NJ. My little MG would nuzzle down in the tracks torn up by the studded motorcyles. Racing with the top up and the heater on was a little different...

You get the clap, Clare. Kudos.

- To change one's self is sufficient. It's the idiots who want to change the world who are causing all the trouble. --Anonymous