SNOWsports DEALER NEWS

Aug/Sept 1976

‘Klawing’ Their Way To The Top

Kalamazoo Engineering is the world’s largest manufacturer of snowmobile traction and control products, Here’s how it got there ...

Someone needs studs? All he has to do is go to his local dealer and buy a package, mount them and he’s ready to go.

True now, but it wasn’t that easy five years ago. Then only racers used studs. Most studs were counted from a bucket kept under the counter and when it came to fastening them, the buyer was on his own - pop - rivets, old bolts, whatever was handy.

Then in 1971, Chuck Rencurrel decided to go into the snowmobile stud business.

Starting with a four-pointed stud he called the Kalamazoo Klaw ( because he lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan at the time), Rencurrel began selling studs, with special bolts and nuts, in a plastic bag. The studs were dirty and they poked holes in the bags, but they worked, and fasteners made them more convenient.

Kalamazoo Engineering, the name Rencurrell chose for his company, packaged Klaws in his basement all that year. The production crew consisted of high school kids working after school. When smaller Micro Klaws and rectangular Kleets were added to the product line, the kids stepped up production and Rencurrel pitched in.

"I didn’t know what the result would be, but I did know there were a lot of racers who were looking for good studs," Rencurrel says, recalling those days. "We started small, but we started with products the racers wanted." And it’s those "products the racers want" that have made Kalamazoo Engineering today, Five years later, a corporation that includes three divisions and occupies two buildings.

The Organization

The first building Kalamazoo built is used exclusively for engineering and manufacturing traction and control products (studs,wear bars,etc.) The newer building now houses the Kalamazoo Traction Products division offices; Kalamazoo Kyotee Kars division, which makes and sells minichamp race cars, and Kalmazoo Parts Center division, U.S. distributor for Kohler engines and parts and other racing parts. It also acts as shipping, receiving and storage area for all three division.

The after-school, teenaged packing crew has now grown to eight managers, three secretary/bookkeepers and an IBM computer working year round to keep Kalamazoo operating. Chuck Rencurrel, as president, still supplies his energies to creating new products for summer and winter racing. Richard Frenthway, first full-time Kalamazoo employee, now serves as manager of production and procurement for the Traction Products and Kyotee Kars divisions.

Kurt Riemenschneider is director of marketing for Kalamazoo Traction products. Steve Wilber is controller for Kalamazoo Engineering, directing the financial aspects of all three divisions.

The Kyotee Kars divsion and Kalamazoo Parts Center are managed by Mark Lindquist, a former snowmobile racer. Greg Johns is parts and service manager of Kalamazoo Parts Center. Richard Lamos is production supervisor for all traction and control products, and Tony Impelizzeri supervises shipping and receiving for all three divisions.

During the snowmobile season, Kalamazoo Traction Products employs an additional production crew of fifteen to twenty, a packaging crew of about seven and a race team of three to five. 

"When we get close to the snow season, people are all over the place," Riemenscheider says. "It’s hard to remember the days when we had two or three people packing part time. At times there are forty or more people going just as full time as they can."

The Traction and Control division is one people usually think of when they think of Kalamazoo. It now produces some 20 different studs, 14 designs of wear bars, 15 models of snowmobile racing tracks, a drag racing track/suspension modification kit and a dozen or more other racing accessories and parts. But the Traction and Control division’s busness is still the one Kalamazoo was founded on five plus seasons ago- studs and bars.

New studs and better bars are (and have always been) the main thrust of Kalamazoo’s constant research effort. Other products have come as a result of racing, but studs and bars are the reason the race team exists. And Kalamazoo has had a race team since before the first stud was pressed. 

Last season’s team, the Kyotee Racers, ran three SnoPro sleds with Sam Sessions and Tom Marks driving. This mobile research team developed the studs and bar modifications that will be a part of this season’s product line. As an additional evaluation effort, Kalamazoo also sponsored some independent racers by supplying racing studs and bars in return for product evaluations and suggestions.

Studs Pop Out Like Popcorn

Most of the studs Kalamazoo makes start out as a special grade of strip steel an inch to two inches wide. In coils about 400 feet long this special steel is run through a stamping machine which pops studs out like single pieces of popcorn day after day. 

In bins of 40,000 to 80,000 studs, batches of studs are heat treated to stay sharper longer than just raw steel alone could manage. Excess chemicals are cleaned from the hardened studs and they are taken to the packaging area.

Specially headed bolts and nuts with washers attached join the new studs in the packaging area, and all three are packaged by weight in plastic bubbles. Kalamazoo sells studs in single application packages of 20, 22 or 48 studs with nuts and bolts, and with the variety of stud types, checking weights is a constantly changing job.

Doghouse- Shaped Carbide

Kalamazoo 3/7 racing Karbides and Konsumer Karbides are made from the same special formulation steel bar. The basic bar, called a host bar, is extruded with a deep groove opposite flat back. This groove is to give the carbide pieces more support, and it’s extruded rather than machined because machining weakens the steel. Lengths of this special extruded steel are cut up into one of fourteen different sizes to fit certain model skis.

Round ends are machined, where needed and from three to six fastening studs are welded on with a Heliarc weld to give extra strength under stress. The bars are then bent where necessary to fit certain ski curvatures. When the host bar is completlely formed it is given an individual sandblasting, by hand, to insure a clean groove ready for the carbide pieces.

Silver braze is applied to the host bar groove and from five to ten pieces of carbide are individually placed at measured points in each bar. The carbide is a special blend of cobalt and tungsten processed to give impact resistance ( to prevent chipping and shattering ) and wear resistance ( to keep a sharp edge longer ). The carbide is then induction brazed into the host bar, two bars at a time to maintain individual quality control. Each piece of carbide is checked for tightness to be sure all pieces are secure. When necessary, the entire bar is re-brazed to tighten the carbide.

After brazing, each bar is again individually sandblasted to remove flux residue and clean the bar for painting. A spray coat of black enamel, and the bars are shrink-wrapped with stud nuts and then taken to the shipping building.

The individual stud and carbide wear bar user is still primarily a snowmobile racer. After all the racer can calculate improved traction and turning ability in the dollars and cents of prize money. Unfortunately, Rencurrel notes, with the decline in racing participation this strongest part of the stud and bar market has also declined.

He adds that top performing consumer studs will require further reseach. But that has been the backbone of traction and control accessories development; stud and wear bar developments formulated on the racetrack laboratory have filtered down to the non-racing snowmobilers.

It’s not cheap. At present Kalamazoo is spending - thousands of dollars researching what the snowmobiler can use to improve traction and thereby improve his enjoyment of his snowmobile. But as Chuck Rencurrel says, "Customer satisfaction is the thing that made us the world’s number one manufacturer of snowmobile traction and control products. If we ‘re to stay on top, customer satisfaction is the thing that will do it. We’ve just got to keep on klawing.