I went by my AC dealer this weekend with my sleds. Stopped by to chat with the salespeople, pick up a couple of things from the dealer and had my trailer connected to my truck with the Firecat's inside.
So the sales guy was asking me about the ISOVIBE installed on the sled. He was impressed with it and asked me if I rode my sled much yet. I mentioned that I only had about 120 miles on it. He remarked that the rails looked like they oxidized quite a bit. He said, "your the kind of guy that will probably take the suspension off and get the rails coated next season."
Looking at the rails, wow. . . all I can say is that bare aluminum sure looks like crap after the first time out in the elements. My skid rails look like they are 5 years old already. They will probably be completely white in another ride. The bolt that holds the rear wheels in place now looks to be "rust colored" instead of bronze looking. I guess this is the first time I've had a skid go from looking new to 5 years old in one ride. Amazing.
Now the solution to this is to keep the skid covered with snow and the best way to do that is to ride it. Beyond that minor thing (not necessarily a flaw), the sled rocks and I'm still very happy with it.
While chatting about the sled, my new trailer, etc. another guy who was out in the lot wearing a Ski-Doo coat came by and we chatted briefly. He asked me how I liked the Firecat, and of course I said I loved it. I was describing it in glowing and sometimes humourous terms. He asked me about ski push and I said I didn't really experience any that I knew of, but that it did have a greater turning radius at low speeds. However with "my" stock setup "standard" I told him I was getting a lot of ski lift and needed to adjust the coupling blocks yet to have a better idea if there is any ski push in the sled. I said, "since the sled is so powerful and off the skis a lot I'm not worrying much about ski push since the skis aren't on the ground." The more important thing is not to hammer it while turning, obviously.
Anyhow, I was in my talking up the Firecat mode, when the sales guy decided to play his joke out on me (by waiting until I had talked to the Ski-Doo guy for a few minutes). The sales guy said, "This is one of our regional Ski-Doo reps. We laughed about that for a second, and the rep said, "well I like hearing about the other guys sleds too." He was pretty friendly and I mentioned that the REV guys I talked to while riding seemed really happy with the REV (taking 1 foot moguls at 80). I told him a REV guy said, "this was the first time I went out looking for bumps". He said, 'yeah we've heard a lot of those types of comments from REV owners' and continued with the statement that they were kind of fearful that the sled takes bumps to well and people are riding them to fast into turns. He said of the REV, that "if they are going to fast and make a sharp turn, the REV will turn, but it can "turn so sharply" that it can pitch the rider off the sled.
He said, they kind of feared that the skinny platform and newer sleds like the Firecat(implied) would be turning so fast and (implied) the simular high performance might cause people to be overconfident and get thrown off their sleds.
It was a nice conversation. I think in a way it's kind of amazing that these sleds even exist with the level of performance that they have, because yes an inexperienced or overaggresive guy could get into big trouble a lot faster with these higher performance machines.
(Okay I started out talking about the oxidation, but now I'm wandering off onto other topics. . . time to stop.)
So the sales guy was asking me about the ISOVIBE installed on the sled. He was impressed with it and asked me if I rode my sled much yet. I mentioned that I only had about 120 miles on it. He remarked that the rails looked like they oxidized quite a bit. He said, "your the kind of guy that will probably take the suspension off and get the rails coated next season."
Looking at the rails, wow. . . all I can say is that bare aluminum sure looks like crap after the first time out in the elements. My skid rails look like they are 5 years old already. They will probably be completely white in another ride. The bolt that holds the rear wheels in place now looks to be "rust colored" instead of bronze looking. I guess this is the first time I've had a skid go from looking new to 5 years old in one ride. Amazing.
Now the solution to this is to keep the skid covered with snow and the best way to do that is to ride it. Beyond that minor thing (not necessarily a flaw), the sled rocks and I'm still very happy with it.
While chatting about the sled, my new trailer, etc. another guy who was out in the lot wearing a Ski-Doo coat came by and we chatted briefly. He asked me how I liked the Firecat, and of course I said I loved it. I was describing it in glowing and sometimes humourous terms. He asked me about ski push and I said I didn't really experience any that I knew of, but that it did have a greater turning radius at low speeds. However with "my" stock setup "standard" I told him I was getting a lot of ski lift and needed to adjust the coupling blocks yet to have a better idea if there is any ski push in the sled. I said, "since the sled is so powerful and off the skis a lot I'm not worrying much about ski push since the skis aren't on the ground." The more important thing is not to hammer it while turning, obviously.
Anyhow, I was in my talking up the Firecat mode, when the sales guy decided to play his joke out on me (by waiting until I had talked to the Ski-Doo guy for a few minutes). The sales guy said, "This is one of our regional Ski-Doo reps. We laughed about that for a second, and the rep said, "well I like hearing about the other guys sleds too." He was pretty friendly and I mentioned that the REV guys I talked to while riding seemed really happy with the REV (taking 1 foot moguls at 80). I told him a REV guy said, "this was the first time I went out looking for bumps". He said, 'yeah we've heard a lot of those types of comments from REV owners' and continued with the statement that they were kind of fearful that the sled takes bumps to well and people are riding them to fast into turns. He said of the REV, that "if they are going to fast and make a sharp turn, the REV will turn, but it can "turn so sharply" that it can pitch the rider off the sled.
He said, they kind of feared that the skinny platform and newer sleds like the Firecat(implied) would be turning so fast and (implied) the simular high performance might cause people to be overconfident and get thrown off their sleds.
It was a nice conversation. I think in a way it's kind of amazing that these sleds even exist with the level of performance that they have, because yes an inexperienced or overaggresive guy could get into big trouble a lot faster with these higher performance machines.
(Okay I started out talking about the oxidation, but now I'm wandering off onto other topics. . . time to stop.)
