Ready for asphalt/ice/snow

As the ice fishing season for Simcoe approaches I wanted to improve upon my smitty setup so that i can pull my sled over pavement without destroying it and without waking-up the whole neighborhood while doing it. I used to have fixed caster wheels on my sled, but to use them i needed to take the smitty off while on asphalt, carry the smitty on top of the sled all the way to the ice, and then lift the loaded sled to put it on top of the smitty. That proved to be a lot of work and and wasn't the easiest or quietest solution. So i decided to have the smitty permanently mounted to my sled, add bigger semi pneumatic wheels, and still be able to pull it when I am on pavement.

This is the result.......

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/XnNB9JElFzA[/YOUTUBE]

Cool, Very creative, you should have patented this.

A+ design! Thanks for posting.

Looks great !!

Thanks bud, but I am sure somebody else has done it already
Was just a project to keep me busy until ice-up.

Looking good!👍🏻

Agree! Very impressive! Great job!

Great ideal

Looks great . Should I place my order now lol.

How nice! Wish I could do this DIY myself:-)

very clever, the springs provide the tension for the shaft to stay in the upright or the lowered position groves, i have been looking at making a smitty with wheels and was thinking of using some sort of lockable eccentric wheel mounts at each wheel but this is much quicker to set as you are moving both wheels on the shaft with one action. The force is strong in you

Awesome way to do it thank you for posting.

Arnie

Excellent. Great idea

Thanks bud, yes the springs + the grooves make sure that the wheels stay in position no matter whether they are deployed or retracted.

When the wheels are deployed, because of the way the grooves are built, forward motion of the sled keeps the wheels positioned even without the springs. In this case springs and grooves are needed only when the sled slows down or pushed backwards.

When the wheels are retracted then the springs make sure the wheels do not drop into the deployed position if and when there's a sudden jerk or a quick stop (especially when towing behind my ATV)

The springs are strong enough to hold the wheels in place with the help of the grooves but not too strong to require a lot of effort during deployment/storing.

The most time consuming part was to carve the grooves and guides into the wood blocks. As i have no router, i had to carve them using a drill, jigsaw and a wood file to give their final shape. Took a few test runs around the house to finally get everything working as expected.

Thank you everybody for the nice comments. I hope it will work as expected when I finally take it for a real run.