Premium

oof. What happened!??

I just listened to the Cory Davis one. Was interesting to hear about the strategies employed during the iron dog, including how to get the sleds to live during 100 mile stretches of no snow. Hopefully Spencer can get Ryan Simons on the podcast soon.

Was able to get out and do some riding in Marquette, MI this weekend. Marquette has an incredible mountain bike scene and trail network if anyone ever gets a chance to ride that area, I highly recommend it. Great snowmobiling too.

If JD is buying the whole TSV division, I gotta imagine they'll still do a better job with Cat than Textron has. Maybe I'm being too optimistic, but the sudden appearance of sled apparel on the JD website at least suggests they may be willing to invest in snowmobiles.

As a kid we had a 93 Polaris SL 750 that was a constant headache. After that we went to Yamaha for PWC and never looked back.

The apparel screenshots were interesting, although maybe they've always had some kind of apparel referencing their old sleds

According to the Snowest FB page, they have also been digging into this rumor.

At this point any company would do a better job than Textron. Hope it's true.

I need to find the vid or just take the clutch off the shelf and check again. I believe the cover contact occurred well before the sheaves touched. I took it off early on because I didn't want to worry about getting capped in the knee with a clutch weight.

I have a video somewhere on my phone of the TEAM roller clutch that I removed and replaced on my 17 Turbo... with the spring out you can see clear as day that the clutch cover will contact the spider nut before full shift. This was on a clutch that was already replaced before I took delivery of the sled. I never had any cracks, but that makes sense given the nature of the issue. The guys that run wide open on lakes all day probably saw the most failures.

For consumers I see the belt drive as a big win. Near zero maintenance and lightweight. I could see in some racing applications it not being an ideal setup. I wonder if we will see the belt drive abandoned in those racing disciplines in favor of a traditional chaincase? Or perhaps a different belt drive design with a different tension adjustment system?

That bearing either gets changed seasonally or get serviced in the way that jonlafon described. The tolerance is so poor the wear happens extremely quickly and even a new free spinning bearing makes little difference to shaft longevity.

It isn't 1 in 1000 though. I've gone through several shafts on multiple sleds...it's just not something that should be happening. Bearings are wear items shafts are not.

This is essentially arguing they don't care about perceived nor actual quality....FAIL

Yes, disassemble your brand new $20k sled to apply loctite to a critical component. It might work. If it were that easy there are 2 scenarios: Cat could do it (apply green loctite) at the factory and has elected not to....FAIL Cat doesn't acknowledge the core problem at all due to cost/assembly logistics/etc....FAIL

Personally I don't care so much about the rotor... Its the inner race of the bearing wearing out the driveshaft.

What's crazy to me is this isn't some magic fix for a poor design...it's literally just tighter tolerances and Cat apparently couldn't even pull that off???

Dumbfounding that Cat did not address this

Was hoping to get out this weekend but the rain has other plans apparently.

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/sam-hill-says-hes-not-done-with-racing.html Apparently Nukeproof is being liquidated?

That's fair

I have a really hard time with ebikes. To me it defeats the purpose...exercise feels good and is good for you. If I want something motorized I'll grab my motorcycle.

My troy is a 140 rear and 150 mm up front. Some versions come with an available 160mm fork. That would be way overkill for what I typically ride. Only occasionally do I miss 27.5 wheels...the 29 is just so much faster overall in my experience, even if it doesn't feel like it. Then when riding the extremely rocky terrain of north shore upper peninsula the monster truck tires come in quite handy too. All depends what/where/how you ride though.

Been an avid mountain biker since high school (now 35). We are fortunate to have around 50 miles of singletrack within a 15 min drive of my house and many more within 45 minutes. I'm with many of you in that it has claimed a collar bone, in addition to a nose, two fingers, and two ribs. Of all the motorsports I do, somehow mountain biking has been the most dangerous for me. I do a race exhibition here and there, but I mainly ride for fun. I have a road bike as well but that mainly gets used for foundational zone2 endurance training both during and off-season on a bike trainer. Primary ride is a Devinci Troy Carbon 29.