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Does Mike Kloety still have a job or did Textron fire him too?

That was a good listen. When he refers to himself in the third person I gotta chuckle. Lots of history there to be sure. I don't think criticizing his story of Zulawski is valid. He speaks very highly of him: "Here's probably one of the smartest snowmobile engineers you'll find". Skime no longer works for Cat and this story of reluctantly firing a guy because he refused to change with the times and work with the young guns actually flies in the face of those who claim Cat didn't evolve due to the people in charge (like Roger) being set in their ways. Roger admits the "what wins on Sunday sells on Monday" motto isn't the gospel, but he insists racing is important, and I 100% agree with that.

I agree I may be the minority, but I absolutely do care where things are made and routinely pay more money for American made products. I would never buy a CF moto, personally.

Not at all. I think a better word than "maintained" like the article used would be "managed." As you pointed out, since the bearing at the TCL is also self-aligning there's movement in multiple places. Speaking to what I believe was the theory behind the design, they are simply "managing" the alignment issues of a twisting motor in a unique way. The only thing that's changed in the catalyst TCL system is the belt setup, so assuming the beltcase settings can offer parallelism between the primary and secondary it should operate just as effectively and reliably as it has the last decade in the procross (on the clutch side at least). The final belt drive is another story. I'm going to be an optimist on this and trust that my new 858 will be perfect right out of the box . But I'm also not naive enough to believe it's impossible that this design is flawed given all the initial driveline problems with the Procross.

The article says C to C and parallelism is maintained, which as long as the motor mounts could "give" enough, particularly side to side, in theory could be possible. As far as the eccentric bearing, there's multiple positions depending on the gear ratio used, so I think what Fortune is saying is that one of these 2 settings will therefore not be optimal, perhaps both if the initial alignment of the engine is off. Here's a good clip showing the shaft movement/eccentric bearing operation (starts at about 2 min). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNpAIYGKuFs

I dunno, I'm not willing to totally discredit the system...my Procross sleds have been amazing on belts and no broken chains in 20k miles . Obviously I don't have a a 2012 or 2013 . Also floating secondaries have been around a long time.

Dug around and found this fwiw. You'd think the Catalyst setup would be no problem at 2 degrees unless the motor mounts are allowing too much movement? Exceeding that 5 degrees and bending the beltcase? https://www.arcticinsider.com/more-tech-pix-and-descriptions-of-the-2012-arctic-cats/ The big news here is a new development called the Torque Control Link (TCL) that serves as a fixed C-to-C distance, coupled with a bearing design on the chaincase side that allows 5 degrees of movement. With the system, the engine and jackshaft (and thus both clutches) are connected to maintain a fixed distance and always parallel regardless of torque, improving performance and increasing belt life.

Certainly not saying it's an ideal setup, but technically the engine centerline is not fixed (rubber motor mounts), and it is also tied to the jackshaft with the TCL. The procross chaincase has had "pivoting" jackshaft bearings in it for since it released which was only possible due to the TCL From 2012 Procross release: "The big news here is a new development called the Torque Control Link (TCL) that serves as a fixed C-to-C distance, coupled with a bearing design on the chaincase side that allows 5 degrees of movement. With the system, the engine and jackshaft (and thus both clutches) are connected to maintain a fixed distance and always parallel regardless of torque, improving performance and increasing belt life."

In theory shouldn't the TCL be keeping everything aligned and the eccentric offset gets translated into the motor mounts?

Good info. I def had my suspicions about parallelism/alignment. Seems like a wild thing to overlook.

So what's not straight? Eccentric bearing only on one side of jackshaft causing alignment issues?

Jeremy Houle from Speedwerx posted a video on 858 products and he not-so-subtly predicted that a new fuel map would be a popular upgrade this season. Combine that with Snowest initially not happy with the 858 performance, then on the second test loving it, I'm thinking there's meat on the bone there in fueling.

I'd really like to pick up a clean 2011 sno pro 600 XC to add to my collection. Prob should do that sooner than later...before they're all clapped out or people want a million bucks for them.

There's a couple other options within a half hour of me, fortunately.