1970 Arctic Cat Panther 440J

I purchased this sled from a gentleman in Platteville, WI in late March, 2002. It's a fully decked out 1970 Panther with a 440 Rockwell JLO. It has electric start, chrome shocks, cylinder head temperature gauges, tachometer, and speedometer. I did quite a bit of riding back in the early 70's with a guy who had one of these. It impressed me at the time as being a cut above everything else on the trails. I wished I had one at the time, and now I do! This is the styling that defines vintage Arctic Cat in my mind. I really like the look and feel of these sleds.

The previous owner and I exchanged numerous emails, and he sent a couple of dark, fuzzy photos. By his descriptions this sled needed but a couple weekends worth of cleanup to be show ready. I won't get into the details here, suffice it to say he was exaggerating quite a bit. It was complete, save for the battery and console vent, and it ran.

I was able to take the sled out for a short ride in April 2002. While the JLO started and idled great, it did not sound or run very good while under way, and had a top speed of about 20 mph. Not wanting to do any damage to the ill-running engine on a very warm day, I put her back on the trailer and headed home. I had another sled in line for restoration that summer, so this one sat for quite some time.

I rebuilt the carburetor in late January, 2003 and took the sled out again to see if any improvement had been made. There was a very noticeable improvement in performance and in the general feel and sound of the engine. There was a noticeable hesitation in acceleration at certain speeds and the top end was only 40 MPH on flat hard packed snow. The engine ran and sounded so good I expected the remainder of the performance issues may be clutch related. I felt confident enough in the sled that day that I ran it about 20 miles, about half of it on unbroken logging trails, and had a really great time.

Fast forward to the winter of 2003/2004. My plans were to restore the Panther during the summer of 2004, but first I wanted to sort out the performance issues and try to get it running well. I cleaned and rebuilt the Salsbury 910 drive clutch, and cleaned the Tillotson HD 27A carburetor once again. I replaced the complete wiring harness, which was a total mess, adding a correct Bosch rectifier. The JLO still ran poorly during sporadic trial rides. Sometimes running well at low speeds but with no "get up and go". Other times running on one cylinder, cutting in and out. In January I pulled it out and did a fairly thorough checkup. There were only two bolts holding the engine to the mounting plate, instead of four. Replaced those. The timing was a tad out of spec on the advanced side, so I brought that back into spec. I pulled the manifolds, cooling shrouds, and heads. From what I could see of the pistons through the ports, they look very good. No damage or blow-by. I had checked compression prior to pulling the engine, and it was 150 psi each side. The piston crowns had some carbon buildup, which I removed. No damage visible there, or to the cylinder walls. I cleaned all the crud out of the cooling fins and fan housing and put it back together. None of this had any effect. If anything it ran worse. 

I had had carburetor trouble on my '71 Panther, and had installed and dialed in a HD69A on that sled while I rebuilt the original. Having since taken that carb off, I decided I'd put it on the '70 and see if a known good running carb would make a difference. At first I was disappointed as it spit back and fouled a plug right away. I put in a new set of plugs, which seemed to help, and was off for a test ride. It was short, maybe three or four miles, but the sled ran remarkably well. There was a minor flat spot in acceleration, but at wide open throttle it finally had some genuine guts. Top speed was still only in the low 40's however, and it bogged pretty badly in deep snow.

That's as good as I was able to get it running before the riding season was over.

In June, 2004 I began the restoration. My goal was to have the Panther ready for the Eagle River show in mid September. Knowing my time was limited, I decided to leave the engine and skid frame as they were. These two items can be easily removed and restored at a later date. With the exception of these two items, and the pan/tunnel which I did not separate, the sled was completely dismantled for restoration.

These parts were too damaged to reuse, missing, or would have taken too much time to refurbish, so they were replaced.

• Drive sprockets

• Drive shaft bearings

• Front bumper

• Rear bumper assembly

• Snow flap

• Hood louver (1)

• Console vent

• Console

• Instrument panel

• Gas tank

• Fuel lines

• Wiring harness

• Rectifier

• Throttle cable

• 90 º intake adapter

• Gas cap/gauge

• Seat snaps

The hood is a 1971 Lynx hood I had lying around. Both the original and Lynx hoods had issues, but the original was more structurally sound. I saved the original as a fall-back in case repairs on the Lynx hood took too much time or did not turn out well. I repaired cracks on the back edges with fiberglass mat, ground out spider cracks in the gel coat and filled with resin, and filled minor scratches and imperfections with bondo. I primed and sanded the hood and took it to a local auto body shop for a basecoat/clearcoat acrylic urethane paint job. The decals are excellent reproductions from Frank Sadlon at Engineered Graphics.

The tunnel was hand polished to a medium shine with Mother's mag & aluminum polish. The belly pan was polished to a high shine. I started with 220 grit sandpaper on a random orbit sander to remove the finish and some of the lighter nicks and scratches. I worked down to 400 grit with the sander and then machine polished with Mother's. The tunnel in nearly flawless, while the pan has some pretty significant scrapes, and many dents on the bottom.

The bulkhead, skis and springs were chemically stripped, sanded to remove rust, coated with POR-15 and topcoated with Blackcote.

The chain case cover was replaced with a 1971 cover, since I quickly tired of dealing with the rubber plugs on the original.

Several broken cleats and missing guides were replaced on the track. This track has both rolled and straight cleats. Every third cleat is the straight type. The center belt suffered some damage from a rivet that became embedded in the center idler wheel. The rubber covering was damaged, but the track is still sound. I sealed up the cover with rubber adhesive and will keep an eye on it. Should I need to replace it at some point, I do have a NOS center belt.

My intent is to, over time, build this sled into a mild custom. As a start toward that end I decided to experiment with a product called ColorChrome from POR-15 Inc.This is a clear coat system designed to be applied over chrome or highly polished metal. It is available in a variety of tints. I chose gold to coordinate with the yellow seat and bumper tape and gold highlight in the hood decals. I applied this to the rear bumper, body supports, shock absorbers, and front bumper. The rear bumper is a chromed replacement for the original non-chromed piece which was badly corroded. The original chrome on the shocks was pretty badly rusted. I removed all of the rust and remaining chrome and polished the steel. I polished the originally unfinished body supports and front bumper. I'm skeptical about the ability of this product to stick to the polished surfaces under the rigors of off-trail riding in cold weather. We shall see.