I recently began snowmobiling for fun and as
cross-training for ATV MX/cross country racing. I quickly found out
that it’s a lot tougher than I thought it would be! Trying to
hang with buddies who have ridden sleds for a few years is nearly
impossible. Another thing I quickly found out, is that I
should have stayed on a little flatter ground until I had some more
experience.  After riding a few different times, I began trying
to follow their tracks up hills I shouldn’t have, and found
out how easy it is to crack a hood or break off a windshield. Now I
know why so many of them you see have stitched together their
pieces with zip-ties! But you can’t always repair it, and
then it’s Sportech to the rescue.
Sportech, Inc. is a custom
plastics thermo-former for the powersports industry. They carry
windshields, hand guards and a few other products for snowmobiles,
as well as a wide variety of parts for both streetbikes and utility
ATVs.  I found a wide variety of colors of windshields,
varying from color tinted so that you can still see through it, all
the way to a very cool-looking diamond plate. Since I knew that
some time in the near future the windshield would most likely need
repaired again, I chose to go with as plain as possible. It ended
up looking really good on our recently-acquired 2001 SkiDoo Summit
700 and matching the colors really well.
 If you’ve never installed a windshield before,
it is very simple. On the underside of the hood there are rubber
grommets on each of the tabs that go through the hood. My
snowmobile had lost all but a few of those, which makes the whole
windshield assembly loose. Rubber o-rings can be used in their
place if you don’t want to purchase the real thing. The piece
that covers the gauges on the dash and the piece that fits around
the lights have to be unsnapped from each other. The new windshield
then wedges between the two pieces and gets snapped back together.
Then once the windshield is sitting in place, all you have to do is
install the grommets.
The Sportech hoods range from $85 for the
colored and tinted windshields to $100 for the chrome and diamond
plate hoods. Keep their number handy – you may need it often! www.sportechinc.com | 
