best mod choice

M

maxco

New member
Joined
Sep 30, 2009
Messages
348
Age
57
Location
coloraDO
Ignorant question. I was looking at mods. the two on the table were lighter skid or a peak head. I do not know if better suspension, and lighter weight are better than increased horsepower. I have heard that a head is a good mod to complete my porting. but for the same price I could drop in a lighter skid Cat or polaris. So if you guys have some real world experience I would appreciate it. :2strokes: thanks for your help
 
personally i would go the head route to enhance/balance your engine package.

depending on what you have in there now and your budget, consider some boyeson rad valves to complete your ensemble. i installed a set years back and i would swear you could feel the difference on the bottom end and the mid range.

as for your skid, its cheap to lighten it and less headache than swapping. you wouldnt be altering the rolling resistance per say, but you may feel the weight difference during manuvers. they all feel heavy when buried or stuck and a 20- 30lb reduction may or may not be noticable.

your skid now should trip the scales between 70-80lbs, the affordable cat and poo skids are around 50lbs and up, unless you can find a score on a skid with fox floats, those would be slightly lighter. 5-10 lbs will easily come off your stock skid.
 
I look at it two ways and of course is just an opinion. If you get a new head, your HP goes up but the sled weight stays the same. If you get a new skid, your HP stays the same but your weight goes down. If you were ONLY GOING TO DO ONE, figure out which one gives you the best HP:WEIGHT gain for the $ and that's the one I'd go with.
 
if your motor is allready ported, id go with the head to "complete" that setup before you start on another area, then save for the skid later. my .02
 
Depending on who did the porting, your stock head may have been modified in accordance with the port specs. My mountain max motor has a set of ported cylinders on it and the guy that did the work had a recommendation for head set up as well. So I'd want to check with the engine builder and see what their thoughts are on the dead set up.

Personally I'd swap the skid as I didn't care for the way the pro-action worked in deep snow. It's heavy, doesn't ride very well, doesn't transfer well and when you mod it so that it does it rides worse, Doesn't get on top of the snow very well, etc... My last two pro-action sleds I've set up with Polaris skids with Holz coilover kits. Shed a pile of weight, transfer well, ride well, and work the snow like a real mountain sled should. Buddy of mine did the cat skid in his and it is significantly better than the stocker. We both did the transfer kits, remove the boggies, etc... and find the skid swaps to be far superior. That's my take on it.
 
agreed, go with the suspension swap. If the guy who ported your cylinders really knew what he was doing, he most likely matched the porting to the heads, or may have also matched the heads to the porting. Putting on a completely different head is not going to work as well as the head the porting was designed to work with.
Though I have found the proaction to be a very decent skid when set up right, it is a bit time consuming to actually get it set to that perfect ride, and the other skids out there can far surpass it when they are also properly set up.
Not only will you be saving weight, but the handling characteristics of your sled will be much improved, and believe me that can be worth much more than the extra power.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top