1979 Ski-doo Blizzard 9500 Plus

Just when you thought that you have all the sleds you want, another one pops up that you just can’t let go.

I was in the garage one night when my wife came out and said her son sent this snowmobile to me to show you, but I don’t want to because you have more than enough. Although I know it’s a Blizzard and you would have been mad if I didn’t show you.

I looked at it and I wanted the sled since it was a 1979 Blizzard 9500 plus that I really liked it.

This was the first year for this sled so, I had him give the guy a call. It was still available, I then called the guy only to find out he was only fifteen minutes from me. It was late on a Thursday night, but he was ok with me driving up to see it, I jumped in the truck and went to see the sled. When I got there, I saw the sled and knew right then that I would buy it. It wasn’t in the best shape, but I knew I was going to be able to fix it up to make it a rider. As we started talking, we found out that we were both firefighters and we talked for a while about our careers in the fire service.

I told him I would take the sled but couldn’t pick it up for a couple of days. After I picked it up and took it home, I started looking it over to see what it needed as I was planning on making it look better. It had a hole in the hood, the seat cover was a mess and the belly pan was dented and rusted, but I was only going to do minor things to fix it up.

The Transformation Begins

As I looked more into it, I found out that several track clips were missing also. Well, the only way to put new clips on was to take out the suspension. So out it came. I then borrowed a track clip tool and was that ever a job to put about fifty of them in one at a time. As long as the suspension was out, I decided to go through the suspension to clean and refresh it. Then that was put back in and the tunnel got polished.

Now onto the hood. There was a hole in the left corner of the hood and some of the front was missing. So, I started sanding down the hood to prepare it for some fiber glassing. I have learned to use fiberglass, and I enjoy it. Creating the missing pieces using fiberglass is fun and when you see the finished product it gives me great pleasure to know I created it. Once that was done, I started filling and priming the rest of the cracks on the hood several times to get all the spots smooth before painting. New stickers were ordered to make it look like it did when it came off the production line.

Now onto the belly pan that had some dents on both sides and underneath it as well. I sanded and filled the dents to make it look like new again. I didn’t just stop there I also went inside the belly pan to clean it up and make it look new again also. Everything under the hood got cleaned and painted if it could except, I didn’t pull the motor. The belly pan on the 79 Blizzard was a light gray color and believe it or not I found a spray can at Menards that matched it almost perfectly. Now under the hood looks nice. So, I then took the skis off and sanded them down so I could paint them. They got a fresh coat of gloss black to make them look new again. I ordered a new seat cover to replace the one that was a mess. Lucky for me that the seat foam was in good shape as I stretched the new cover over the foam and stapled it to the seat bottom.

Now that all the parts are finished, it was time to put it all back together. As the parts went on it was starting to look like the machine that was in the showroom at one time many years ago. What a nice sled once it was finished. There was a lot more work put into this project than I really planned on but as you know one thing leads to another. I should have just done a full restoration in the first place. But for a sled that the wife didn’t think I needed she said it turned out nice and I can’t wait to ride it. •