This week’s Old Sled Sighting once again proves that you just never know where you will make an Old Sled sighting. Recently I spotted this mid-1980’s Yamaha Enticer 340 sitting out in someone's backyard, tucked behind a pile of junk and hidden by bushes. Rusting away and exposed to the elements with a “major OUCH” on its front bumper – this ol’ Yamaha has definitely seen better days.
These popular Yamaha machines featured some of the industry's leading edge snowmobile technology of the day. In 1980’s, Yamaha was making a big impression on the snowmobile world by incorporating a number of innovations into their high performance sleds.
As one snowmobile commentator stated, “A new wave of Yamaha models highlighted by the Enticer series gave consumers a lightweight, low-priced, fun-to-ride machine that required minimal maintenance. While they were fun and popular, the Enticer 340s (were) designed to entice Ski-Doo, Arctic Cat and Polaris customers to the Yamaha brand of moderately priced trail models.”
He further observed that the Yamaha 340, ”...was slotted between the budget-priced 250 single and the bigger Enticer 340. Back in the day, the Enticer 300 proved competitive in two stock cross country and snocross “sport” classes – the 300 and the larger 340 class.”
Maybe with a little Bondo, a lot of elbow grease and a bit of tinkering this old sled might be ready to run again—a classic 1980’s Yamaha Enticer 340 powering down the trail.
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