1948 Tucker Snocat 422 in MN (actually WI)

So I may have mentioned owning a 2 track, 2 ski Tucker in a previous post many months ago. I'm in MN while the Tucker has been collecting dust over at my dad's shop in WI (almost directly across the Mississippi from my place). After attending the 2019 Snocat Clowder with my dad, he decided he'd rather get into vintage snocatting vs. vintage sledding (he had a couple nice sleds and a cutter). Fast forward to a few weeks ago, we finally got around to working on the 1948 Tucker 422 in his shop.

There is a good back story on how we obtained this Tucker, we actually found a different Tucker (1947 Tucker 423 with a rare flathead Ford V8). The rare Tucker was awesome but more of a basket case than I'd like and after a short negotiation I was able to get this '48 422 that was much more complete! Wish I could find the post from the Pontoon Princess when she picked up the '47 423 at my dads, I'll keep searching for it on this forum and add a link.

Anyway, here's a couple pictures of the initial restoration. We had to start by fixing the front wheel assembly, the old one was weak and been repaired far too many times. I worked on restoring the tracks over the summer so we could finally get the Tucker rolling again. The short term goal of this project is to have this '48 Tucker at the 2020 Clowder. So far it looks promising, we have it running and driving but still needs more repairs and maintenance before it's ready for the rugged U.P. of Michigan.

Since the snocat is moving under it's own power now, we have taken it to a couple vintage snowmobile shows this winter. Draws a crowd during the shows, we even took home a peoples choice trophy from one of them!

One of the next isssues that needed to be resolved was one of the pontoons, overall they still have plenty of life left in them but the bottom of one was splitting apart so I gave it a temporary repair unlil we refurbish both of them. Wasn't too bad, just used some 16 gauge sheet metal bent at 90 degrees and put tack welds all over it. Ground all the welds smooth and a quick coat of primer.

I may have seen this beauty come past my place!


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Finally got out of summer hibernation and working on the Tucker again. After patching up one pontoon last year planning to get the second one done this year. The second one had more significant rust and was missing some of the inner flat metal structure. I'm not ready to do a full blown restoration so didn't want to cut the "rustic" sheet metal off the top for the repairs so decided to go at it from the bottom. The stainless metal is still in great shape, just a little dented here and there. Already have some new sheet metal and flat stock pre-fabricated, just cleaning up the old metal on the pontoon getting ready for welding. Will be posting some progress this weekend, can't believe I'm working outside with the garage wide open in November (weather is in the 70's!).

This looks like a lot of FUN/WORK

Maybe this is why Tucker went to the rubber track system.

Years ago I got involved with a Pontoon rebuild......Arrrrrrgh

Gonna be nice when you get it all finished....

Got all the new sheetmetal tacked in, mocking up all the flat stock to make sure everything will fit. So far so good, will work on final welding as time permits during the week and should have it wrapped up this weekend. The weather finally got cold again and there's a trace of snow, need to get this pontoon back on the Tucker soon!

Looking great..