1972 Scorpion Stinger III - 400 CCW

In January of 2003 I purchased this sled from a gentleman who had seen my sleds displayed at a sno-cross race, and figured I'd give it a good home.

This sled is in really tough shape, and my original intent was to use it as a parts sled. The more I think about it though, I just may tackle a restoration. Nearly all of the pieces are there, and I think I could get it running and drivable with a weekends work. The engine starts and idles fine. But it needs A LOT of cleaning, painting, and polishing. The seat, as usual, is completely shot.

What makes this sled particularly interesting to me is the rear suspension. It is the "Stinger Glide" slide suspension. This showed up first on the 1971 racing sleds. It was offered on consumer sleds  only for the 1972 model year, and only on the Stingers powered by the 400 CCW engine. That would make it pretty rare, and I have never seen one except in the sales brochure.

This was Scorpion's only try at a true slide suspension before being bought out by Arctic Cat. Stories I've hear from those who had them are mixed. The system uses bare metal slide rails that ride directly on the poly track. This resulted in a lot of wear in marginal snow conditions. When snow conditions were better, it appears to have held up OK. I've heard that the factory developed a kit at mid-season that added idler wheels to reduce the friction. The brochure mentions that the slide and bogey suspensions are easily swappable and suggests that the owner may want to buy both and switch them during the season, based on snow conditions.

After looking at the sales brochure for 1972 closely, I noticed that this is the suspension that is on the Super Stinger II prototype that was used for the cover photo. The Super Stinger came with the first generation Pararail that year, so it must not have been ready in time for the photo shoot, probably done during the winter of 1971. The Super Stinger III shown in the brochure is actually a retouched photo of the cover sled, and the suspension can be seen more clearly in that photo.

If anyone has additional information about this suspension or maybe personal experience, I'd love to hear from you.