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Rare Indeed!
At Princeton in 2010 I met the Swede that raced the sled overseas and he verified that it originally had a 340cc motor. He upgraded it to a 500cc liquid to race it, but the sled currently has a 440 El Tigre engine.
About a month after picking up the sled from Tom, there was an article in Cat’s Pride magazine by Charles Pluedeman. It quoted Tubby Lund as saying that they had “machined enough parts to build four sleds, but built two and kept the rest for spares.” Neither Tom nor I had any idea that the sled was so rare!
This event led me to another vintage sled collector out west, “Jerry.” He had posted on the internet that he had a NOS (new old stock) hood for that sled. I sent him a note asking if he would part with it. While not interested in selling it, he would let me have a mold lifted from it.
Jerry was kind enough to bring the hood along on a trip to the Twin Cities and drop it off at Lee Fredrickson’s “Classic Muscle Sleds.” When Lee showed me the hood, I asked him NOT to reproduce it, as I have never seen one like it. It might have been a Cat, but it was not my Cat.
Then at the Waconia, Minn., show in January 2010, Oster was showing photos of his racing days with Team Arctic from ’78-’81. I finally put it together when he showed me photos of the No. 28 direct-drive sled. I exclaimed “I might know where that sled is!”
Doug thought I was crazy, as they only built a few of them for racing.
I contacted Jerry, the owner of the NOS proto hood, and asked if he would send me pictures of the sled that matched the hood he brought to Minn. Once received, I forwarded them to Doug, to which he replied, “That is definitely my old sled.”
Since I had the ’79 jackshaft L/C sled Doug raced, and had recently purchased his 2009 Sno Pro 600 that he raced in the USCC ’08-’09 season (yes, he is one tough dude!), I was going to try and buy the No. 28 DD-IFS racer.
Eventually Jerry and I settled on a deal. One small problem, the sled was in Montana and I live in New York. Enter Tom Rowland, again. He offered to pick up No. 28 on a trip to Montana in June, 2010.
Adding another twist to this crazy story, Tom had purchased an IFS hulk the summer before. It was rough, half crushed, had the drive system and IFS intact, but no motor or body work. As good luck would again have it, it was the twin to No. 28, raced by Bowman.
As it stands today, Tom is rebuilding his Bowman DD-IFS racer using spare parts that came with No. 28, reverse engineering when needed and lifting molds from the NOS hood and original belly pan. Tom was able to bring the naked No. 28 to Cat’s 50th anniversary in 2011 where more info came out.
The motor in No. 28 was not the fan-cooled power plant Doug remembers, but an early liquid-cooled proto of a 56 hp, piston ported, compact design. Arctic engineering had one like it on display, and pointed out it was the proto to the 1990 Prowler 440 first tested in 1979.
Soon it seems, both the Bowman and Oster racers will be back in one piece and may be on display at vintage events in the Midwest and Northeast. When it comes to collecting rare vintage sleds, you can be good, or you can be lucky. I will take luck any day!