SNOCRUISE SLED 101 SMOOTH RIDING |
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WHAT IS REALLY IMPORTANT HERE ?
Maybe this TOPIC is
something that you never even thought of ?
OK to
put that into perspective, your snowmobile suspension is going to
control the snowmobile & rider mass that is going thru these motions. PERSPECTIVE...EXPERIENCE...a VARIETY OF CONDITIONS...
This what I have observed
experienced and can share with you. I
can tell you that a
smooth riding snowmobile definitely goes a long way to getting me
excited about riding. Our experience has simply been that when you least
expect it the trail could get rough or a blow thru is hiding on a cloudy
day in an open meadow. This is where "The rubber meets the road!" so to
speak.
MANUFACTURES
"Motorhead"
JARGON -The
"Rear Suspension" is the mechanical apparatus: Front suspension arm, and
the rear suspension arm and scissor, the hard ware mounted in the track
guides under the seat. Now
when you read that your snowmobile is equipped with a super long travel
type of suspension (
XTC,
XT and
SXR
PROACTION models)
consisting of travel numbers well over the lower slung minimum travel
models (SX
PROACTION models)
it's not that a minimum travel model can't give you a
"Snow Cross" Racing Events. Anyone can read
this in most of the major publications for themselves. So it can be said
that most people would not be excited about trail riding a sled set up
with "race shocks and springs". It should be noted that the emphasis
when it comes to snowmobiles is usually on the shocks and the rate of
their "upward" and "downward" rate of dampening (both on compression and
on rebounding) than it is the springs. |
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In Snowmobile land our sport could be broken down domestically into a couple main suspension transitions. The front suspensions were pretty standard (1) "leaf0Springs" first on a buggy now on snowmobiles! (2) "Leaf Springs with Shocks" then a revolutionary idea, and what a difference to your suspension and ride when some dampening is applied to the spring rebound. (3) "Variable rate Springs (Parabolic curve) with Shocks" "variable rate mono leaf" by Yamaha on the new SS 440. These springs, a phenomena created by the steel masters in Japan (sword makers?) -only used to my knowledge on the SS 440 model, 1980 to 1985. (4) "Coilover Swing Arm" "Rarely seen drag link coil over". I had at least 3 Super Brute Alouette snowmobiles going at one time and the coil over swing arm front suspension rode really nice. Non of these machines that I owned attained a life time of big miles so their potential was not realized. (5) "A Arm" or "Wish-bone" "Independent suspension" that was first used in 1973 on a few racers has over time, about 30 years later been adopted by all the current manufacturers. (6) "Trailing Arm" Independent front suspensions" arrived on the scene after a wave of starts and stops in the racing arena. Once Snow Cross racing started to take off in the 90's, these suspension models quickly expanded to long travel versions. The key thing here that a lot of people maybe don't realize is that these suspensions are fairly light weight, and more importantly all the forces "from the hit" are transmitted VIA triangulation into the center of the chassis. This makes our fleet of Yamahas light and tough of nails. Characteristics in the Saskatchewan back country that completely over rule some form high centering late model snowmobile that may or may not have a slight "Formula One" advantage on a groomed trail. (7) "Strut" another option for consumers. Some of the earliest snowmobiles had kinda a sliding piece of pipe inside a coil spring, maybe it was a valve spring off a steam engine parked out back.... who knows, you certainly couldn't credit it as a strut suspension. Strut suspensions were more sophisticated than that when they were introduced in about 1981. When suspensions went long travel, the strut just did not perform, the side loads on the moving components would bind when at full extension during cornering loads during cornering. Jets and air planes that have struts have the strut angled towards the direction of travel to minimize this. Cornering speeds are not a factor.
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SNOCRUISE TOUR SLEDS |
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