Listen to the Experts
After a successful weekend of racing during the opening rounds of AMSOIL Championship Snocross, driver Lincoln Lemieux made the Pro Open final on Sunday.
Lemieux was on the to-three in about 14 laps out of the 20 lap race when the unthinkable happened, he stared to slow down , losing power by the second and had to drive back to his trailer.
When team owner Steve Scheuring arrived, the heat from Lemieux’s Ski-Doo* RS600 engine was overwhelming. “There were parts of the engine that melted,” said Scheuring. “You could smell that antifreeze had gotten hot. Everything was just hot. That’s the best way I can describe it. Just hot.”
“In a normal situation when something like this happens, the motor will lock up because of the high temperatures. The rings will stick to the piston. The pistons will score the cylinder walls. There’s a good chance the crank bearings will seize,” said Scheuring.
Instead, the rings and pistons were still free and the crankshaft still turned freely. “We saw some minor [piston] scuffing,” said Scheuring, “and it was like, ‘this is crazy how well the inside of this motor looks.’”
Each one of Scheuring’s Ski-Doo engines makes up a big portion of a race sled’s high cost. “We could take this motor, put new gaskets in it, put new exhaust valve covers on it and go racing,” said Scheuring. “We go above and beyond the capabilities of these motors. If they fail they cost us money, they cost us time and they cost us races, and we can’t afford to lose any of those.”
Scheuring credits AMSOIL DOMINATOR® Synthetic 2-Stroke Racing Oil with saving his engine. “We’ve worked with AMSOIL the last 20 years developing two-stroke oils for our race sleds,” said Scheuring. “In my opinion, I believe 100 percent the reason that motor lived was because of the AMSOIL products.”
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