This week they ran from Houghton to Copper Harbor, Michigan in an effort to find the cleanest and most efficient snowmobile possible.
The 2017 SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenge is being held at the Keweenaw Research Center near the campus of Michigan Tech in Houghton.
Event coordinator Jay Meldrum says to win the competition they need low emissions, which means better emissions than the Yellowstone standards. They have to have low noise, equal or lower than the Yellowstone standard and fuel economy. The Yellowstone standards are National Park Service standards for noise and emissions. He says they have 11 teams that passed technical inspection and another 5 that didn't. Meldrum says occasionally the advancements arrive in the sled you buy...
".....the first direct-injected snowmobile was demonstrated by Idaho and they actually won the event and then next year Ski-Doo put that in their product line..."
The challengers drove the 100 miles between Houghton and Copper Harbor this week to test the new designs. Teams from the U.S., Canada and Finland are involved.
