About 3 years ago I met a guy named Mike Johnson of Yakima, Washington. I had bought a few Ski-Doo parts form him. Then in the spring of 2001 he called me and said he had picked up two 1971 SR Yamaha sleds without motors/pipes from a guy out by him (Vern Antonsson). He said one of the sleds had belonged to Lynn Trapp.  The other sled he thought was Vern's personal race sled that he had painted the chassis white. I ended up buying the other '71 Yamaha SR because it was cheaper.  I always liked those neat little sleds.

I had the sled shipped from Washington via Stephen Burdick while Stephen was traveling cross country.  Stephen dropped the sled off at Kurt Krueger's house near Minneapolis until I was able to pick it up.  If you look at Larry Preston's website, www.vintagesleds.com under the collection of Kurt Krueger, you will see my Yamaha sitting in a comer of his shed and Larry snapped a picture of it.

My wife and I picked the sled up in the summer of 2002 from Kurt's house. I still remember my wife's face when she saw the sled and then as 'W drove home questioning my sanity about why I had bought this sled.

I slowly tore into stripping the chassis of its white paint and trying to find a motor/pipes for it and some miscellaneous parts. I had found a '72 SR433 motor that I planned to install in the sled that I rebuilt over the winter of 2002/2003, when I decided maybe I should call that guy to see if he had that Yamaha he claimed was a Trapp sled, to see if he had a motor.

After a couple of calls I made the trip to find the sled. The guy explained that he had found a '71 SR tunnel and that he had put in a motor/pipes and a hood that he had got from a "guy out west" in the '70's that had connections to Yamaha.  He built the sled and found out that the motor was a factory motor as was the pipes and hood.  The pipes were unique in that they were hand built and carne out the left side of the hood as you sat on the sled.  I agreed that it must have been a factory motor and pipes, for the pipes looked like ones I had seen at the races in '71 and in pictures of the factory Yamaha race team of Mike, Lynn and Wayne Trapp.  In any event I bought the whole thing, for I needed a hood, motor, pipes for my sled.  Another thing was neat in that a big tach was attached the motor that looked like it came off an early DT Yamaha enduro bike. The owner said the tach came with the motor When he got it.

I figured the motor/pipes were probably something factory that maybe floated back to Wisconsin through the Yamaha test facility that was in Northern Wisconsin. But otherwise, it was not a factory sled, but something that admittedly had been piece-mailed together by the owner through parts he had gotten form "some guy" out west from Yamaha.

I stripped the sled out and sold the ruined chassis. I started to strip the hood to have it redone.  That's when things got very weird in this whole project. As I sanded through the many layers of paint on the hood, I found stickers that said Champion Spark Plugs, Quaker State Oil and then the kicker a paper square sticker of poor quality that had painted on it "C-41".

I gave a call to Mike Trapp who I had known and asked him if he remembered his number in '71.  He said he thought it was C-41. He said to call Loren Anderson of the Snowmobile Hall of Fame, for he had old pictures, etc. I called Loren and Loren stated "yes" Mike's number was C-41! Now I knew that I was onto something.

I placed a call to Mike Johnson and I said I think I have Mike Trapp's hood and motor and I wondered if he knew who would have had possibly Mike Trapp's sled out there that parted it out in the '70's and possibly sold the parts to someone in Wisconsin.  Mike Johnson said he was intrigued by that and said if anyone knew, it would be Vern Antonsson and he would go over and talk to him.

This is where the story all came together. Vern explained that the two sleds he sold to Mike Johnson were Lynn Trapp's sled and Mike Trapp's sled. Vern explained how he had gotten the two sleds from Mel Calloway and how he had stripped Mike's sled down and sold the hood/motor/pipes in the '70's to someone in Wisconsin, how he had painted Mike's chassis white to make it less conspicuous, etc. Also he pointed that the serial numbers of the Lynn's sled and Mike's sled are very close.

Mike Johnson looked at his sled of Lynn's and found that the serial number is SR433-00230 and the sled I have of Mike's is SR433-00228.

Mike Johnson called me this late spring with the news that was exciting for the both of us. It is amazing how this all came together.

Now came restoring the sled back to it's original grandeur. Mike Trapp had provided me with some photos of what the sled looked like ear1y in the race season.  I used that as my guide and also I was able to save the stickers on his hood and I had them reproduced and placed back exactly on the hood where I had taken them off.  I also had the sticker for his number, removed and reproduced to as close as it was on his hood as when I found it.  The seat was rotted and through the help of  my good friend Ray Tkachuk, it was reproduced again through photos that Mike Trapp had provided me.  In the photos Mike Trapp had provided me, it showed his sled with a windshield that was later removed in the year.  When I got his hood there was no windshield on it.   decided to have the windshield re-made and thus, have it look as it did in the beginning of the race year.

I cleaned and rebuilt the motor, sandblasted the pipes and began re-assembly.  One huge hang-up was the carburetors. The carburetors on Mike's motor when I got it were a primitive Yamaha fuel injection system.  Mike had explained to me that his motor had special Keihin "alcohol" carbs on it that, along with special fuel helped him to win the World Championship in 1971(and resulted in USSA banning alcohol after the 1971 race season).  I was doomed in that the alcohol carbs were nowhere to be found.  Another twist in this story is that Loren Anderson knew my disappointment in not having the alcohol carbs and he contacted Gordy Muetz the race director for Yamaha and Mike, Lynn and Wayne Trapp in the '70's, who lived in nearby Woodruff and now retired from Yamaha.  Gordy was excited to hear I had Mike's sled and stated that he had the infamous alcohol carbs laying in his garage that he had taken of Mike's sled back in 1971 and this past spring had given them away, for Gordy was moving away. The current owner or the alcohol carns though at this time does not want to part with them and thus I am running the fuel injection system that was used on Mike's sled as it was grass-raced in the summer of '71 and '72.  As I worked on the sled over the past years I kept things low-key about it's famous history until all the pieces were in place.  I owe a lot of help to John Liske of Liske Marine (Yamaha dealer) for letting me go through their parts bins, Frank Sadlon of Engineered Graphics for reproducing the stickers, Mike Johnson for helping me track down the history of the sled (and selling it to me), Eric Roush, Jon Hull and Steve Dahnke for educating me on Yamaha's race motors, Ray Tkachuk for his amazing ability to re-do the seat, Loren Anderson for putting me in touch with Gordy Muetz and of course Mike Trapp for photos, memories and help on getting the sled back to it's original state.