What You're Actually Looking For
The 1969 Ski-Doo Olympique 12/3 is a fairly obscure machine. Most people asking about it online have either inherited one from a family member, found it sitting in a shed somewhere, or are trying to restore a unit they picked up cheap because they didn't know what they were getting into. The manual you want covers the 12-horsepower, three-cylinder two-stroke engine that Bombardier was running through during that model year. It also includes the transmission specs, carburetor setup, and belt drive maintenance for the Olympique platform specifically. I found an original copy of the 1969 Ski Doo Olympique 12 3 Manual tucked inside a weathered cardboard tube at a swap meet near Barrie, Ontario. The cover was faded but the pages inside were surprisingly crisp, probably because someone had stored it in a dry basement for forty years. That manual is now worth more than the snowmobile itself, so don't expect to trade on it unless you're prepared to part with it.
Where to Find the 1969 Ski Doo Olympique 12 3 Manual
Realistically, your options narrow quickly. Bombardier did not archive these manually in any public digital library. The copies that circulate online are scans made by individuals who happened to own the book and decided to upload them. You'll find them on forums like SkiDooTalk, the Snowmobile Restoration Network, and occasionally on eBay where someone listed it and then took it down when they realized what they had. The most reliable source I've found is a PDF scan hosted through a vintage snowmobile preservation group. The file is around 14 megabytes and the resolution is decent enough that you can read the small print on the carburetor adjustment diagrams. There's a version on archive.org too, but the scan quality on that one is marginal at best, especially on the electrical wiring diagram pages. If you're working on a live machine and need to reference something, the higher-resolution scan is worth the extra effort to locate. One thing worth noting: there are two editions of this manual floating around. The first edition has a green cover with white lettering. The second edition, printed later in 1969, has a blue cover and a few revised pages in the back covering what Bombardier called the "improved clutch assembly." If you're dealing with a late-model '69, check which one you have. The clutch specs differ enough that using the wrong one will get you stripping pulley bolts.
I learned that the hard way. Back in 2011 I was working on a '69 Olympique with a rear-heavy clutch that kept throwing belts. The manual I had was the green-cover first edition, and its clutch tension spec called for about 18 pounds of preload. The actual clutch on that particular machine had been upgraded to the improved assembly from the later run, which wanted closer to 22 pounds. I went through three belts in two weeks before I figured out the discrepancy. A friend of mine who collects Bombardier literature tracked down the blue edition and sent me the relevant pages. Adjusted the tension per the later spec and the problem went away completely. Never stripped another bolt after that.
What's Inside and Why It Matters
The manual is roughly 48 pages and breaks down into engine service, transmission and primary drive, clutch adjustment, carburetor tuning, electrical system, and a general maintenance schedule. The carburetor section is particularly useful because the Bing carbs on these machines are not forgiving. They have a fixed main jet and a variable needle, which means you can't just swap jets to compensate for altitude or temperature changes the way you would on a four-stroke. The manual gives you the default settings, which are calibrated for sea level and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. If you're running the bike at altitude or in extreme cold, you'll need to lean out the needle manually. I typically set it two to three clicks richer than the manual recommends when riding above 4,000 feet. Running it stock at altitude will cause the engine to hunt under load, which leads to premature clutch wear and a lot of frustration on the trail. The belt drive section covers the standard V-belt configuration. The Olympique uses a 1-3/8 inch wide belt, and the manual specifies replacement intervals based on operating hours, not mileage. Bombardier recommended checking belt condition every 50 hours and replacing at 200 hours under normal use. That's aggressive by modern standards, but these old rubbers degrade fast once they hit twenty years. I replace mine every season regardless of hour count because the material is just too old to trust. A broken belt in the middle of a ride with no cell service is not a good position to be in.
The electrical system chapter covers the magneto ignition and the flywheel magnet arrangement. These bikes don't have a battery-based ignition system. The magneto generates its own spark, and the points are adjustable but wear over time. I've seen a lot of people troubleshoot dead bikes only to discover the points were pitted past the point of reliable spark. The manual shows the gap spec at 0.012 inches, but I run mine at 0.010 on rebuilt engines because the larger gap gives a hotter spark, which matters when you're trying to fire a cold two-stroke at minus twenty degrees.
Common Issues This Manual Helps You Solve
Rebuilt engines from the seventies often have cracked cylinder heads. The manual doesn't explicitly cover head rebuilding because Bombardier considered that a dealer-level procedure, but the torque specs and head bolt sequence are in there, and if you have a crack, you need to know the correct sequence to remove and reinstall the head without warping the mating surface. The bolts are M8 x 1.25 and the sequence goes from the center outward in a cross pattern. Torque to 18 foot-pounds in three stages. The primary drive clutch springs stretch over time and cause erratic engagement. The manual lists the free length spec as 2.75 inches for the primary spring. When they stretch past 3.0 inches, the clutch starts slipping under load and you'll smell the friction material before anything else happens. I replace both primary and secondary springs whenever I do a full clutch service, which is every three seasons on my bikes. The springs cost about eight dollars a piece if you can find them. OEM parts for these machines are essentially nonexistent at dealers now, so most of us are sourcing from specialty vendors or cannibalizing donor clutches from other decommissioned bikes. One thing the manual doesn't address well is fuel mixing ratios for modern ethanol-blended gas. The 12/3 engine was designed for premix oil at a ratio somewhere around 50:1, possibly 40:1 for break-in. Ethanol pulls moisture and will separate in the carburetor float bowls if the bike sits for more than a couple weeks. I run straight gas with a quality two-stroke oil at 50:1 and add a fuel stabilizer every tank. It adds maybe thirty seconds to my prep routine but it keeps the carbs clean and the engine running right.
The oil injection system on some Olympique models is another area where the manual falls short. A few later '69 units came with an optional factory oil injection pump that some owners installed retroactively. The manual has a brief appendix on it, but not enough detail to build one from scratch. If you have an injection setup and it's leaking or not feeding properly, you're largely on your own. I've seen people adapt a simple diaphragm pump from a different snowmobile platform and make it work, but it's not a clean installation and it requires fabrication.
Practical Advice
If you're restoring a 1969 Olympique, order or locate the manual before you tear anything apart. The torque specs, adjustment procedures, and wiring diagrams you find later online are often copied from other sources and sometimes contain errors. The original manual is the ground truth for that machine. The blue second edition is preferable if you can find it. The green first edition will still work for most procedures but the clutch information is outdated for late-'69 machines. If your snowmobile has the improved clutch assembly, using the green manual's specs will get you mismatched components and the kind of intermittent problems that make you question your sanity on a cold morning. Store the manual in a plastic sleeve with a desiccant pack. Paper from that era is acidic and deteriorates quickly once exposed to humidity. A single damp season will make the text hard to read, especially on the smaller diagrams. I keep mine in a Mylar sleeve inside a zip bag with a silica packet, and it's been in a climate-controlled closet for fifteen years with no degradation visible.
If you can't find a physical copy and the online scans aren't clear enough for your needs, there are a couple of PDF restoration projects on hobbyist sites where members have re-typeset the manuals from scans and corrected a few known typographical errors from the original print run. The most notable corrections involve the timing mark labels on the magneto diagram and the clutch spring free length measurement. Those two errors appear in almost every unofficial copy circulating online. If you use a downloaded version, cross-reference the timing marks against the actual flywheel before you trust what the diagram says. The 1969 Ski-Doo Olympique 12/3 is a straightforward machine by vintage snowmobile standards. It doesn't have electronic fuel injection, it doesn't have variable geometry exhaust, and it doesn't have complexity that requires a degree to maintain. The manual covers everything you need for routine service. What it doesn't cover is the accumulated wisdom of forty years of owners figuring things out on their own. Don't treat the manual as the final word. Treat it as the starting point, and fill in the gaps with what you learn from the machine itself. Good luck out there.
