Max Weigh In On Facts
A “must read” for serious sledders is MaxSled.com’s piece about snowmobile weights. This is a factual article that took quite a bit of work to pull off, so “Major Kudos!” to the MaxSled staffers. The piece is quite enlightening and very much self-explanatory, so we won’t totally recap what they’ve done. But we will add some additional thoughts of our own based on the work that MaxSled staffers did.First of all, while we are certain that some will have their front bumpers a bit outta joint over the audacity of a snowmobile website actually publishing real results on weights that may or may not coincide with a manufacturer’s “published” dry weights, we felt that Max Sled did an immensely fair report. The results were what the digital scale reported.
Four-Stroke Heft —It is interesting to note one seemingly inescapable conclusion: 4strokes, by and large, are h-e-a-v-y! As reported by MaxSled, the Polaris’ 4stroke FST Classic pushes nearly 680-pounds. In fact, virtually any Polaris with the 140-horsepower, 4stroke turbo powerplant seems to lead in their categories! Good news for Polaris is that where it counts, in both the 150-hp and 120-hp trail banger groups, the Polaris 700cc Dragon models and 600cc IQ iterations are actually either the lightest or close to being the lightest — and this is with a full fuel tank!
Still, the MaxSled results showcase some simply incontrovertible facts that, were we Yamaha, would be of some concern. Except for the 80-hp sports sled category, Yamaha 4strokes carry too much weight versus the lightest competition. Glaring examples occur in the high performance ditch banger class where MaxSled reports that a Yamaha Apex RTX (that company’s most serious big bump power sled!) outweighs Polaris’ 700cc Dragon and Ski-Doo’s Blizzard 800 by upwards of 70-lbs! Figure that both the Apex and the Blizzard 800 put out similar power and you needn't be a math whiz to figure which model has the superior power-to-weight ratio, which is a big deal in the dirty stuff and coming off the turns!In the crossover categories Yamaha again shows a weight disadvantage. But this time the disadvantage is even more significant — the Yamaha Rage was shown to weigh 661-lbs while the Polaris Switchback 600 HO was shown at 570-lbs! That, friends, is a difference of 90-pounds! That is truly significant in the “off-trail” category where riders are not only riding big bumps but also blasting their own trail in deep snow!
Heavy Surprises —Fortunately, Yamaha 4strokes are not the heaviest of sleds for 2007. Aside from the turbocharged Polaris FST models, Arctic Cat now ventures into a realm that it hasn’t visited in quite awhile. Its new line of totally revamped models --which include an all-new chassis as well as an all-new, Suzuki-built, 4stroke engined model-- is now among the heaviest in some categories according to MaxSled’s research. This makes Yamaha 4strokes frequently the lightest 4stroke in the sport. That’s a good thing! Checking where Cat’s Jaguar Z1 weighed in shows it is heftier than the comparable Yamaha Vector, but shy of Polaris’ 4stroke turbo-equipped trail luxury sled. As Polaris discovered, all that “one size fits all” equipment to make the handlebars, seat and windshield readily adjustable means added weight. You wondered why Polaris ditched its proprietary multi-position handlebars? Two reasons, most serious ditch riders didn’t want it and they especially didn’t want the added weight penalty.‘Doo Agree —Which sled maker comes out of this looking pretty good? Have we mentioned Ski-Doo? Go to the MaxSled site and check out the 'Doo statistics. The BRP-built sleds will not always be the very lightest, but they are consistently among the lowest in weight. Considering that the Rotax powerplants are also consistently potent and you have an overall grouping of sleds that are very strong in power-to-weight potential.
We also agree full-heartedly with the MaxSled staffers who note that you can decry the wet versus dry weight bias all you want, but out on the trail it’s always better to have fuel and oil in your sled than in the garage.
For a more exact representation of the results, go to the source— www.maxsled.com. As for us at snowmobilia, thanks you guys for stirring the pot and bringing some real world facts to light for us that ride with fuel in our tanks!
© 2007 snowmobilia/Jerry Bassett
To comment go to – http://www.amsnow.com/jerrysblog
