Please excuse me, I'm from the (other) Cat side of the forum. We Cat guys love the Polaris Gripper ski on our "Fat" Cats! I just ordered a pair for my '17 Mountain Cat & need to run the narrower AC spindle dampers to fit; seems that neither the Polaris nor the AC rubbers hold up in the ski very long/well. Skinz sells a "Polaris Ski Spindle Pad" for $69.99 that fills the center holes in the ski to better support the rubber dampers. Do any of you have any first-hand experience with this product? Skinz makes good stuff, but I don't want to waste money on something that does not help. Some Cat guys do some plastic fabrication (ie; grind the center section flat) adding plastic supporting pieces. Does simply filling the voids in the ski spindle area with silicone do anything? Take pitty on a Kitty rider and share your thoughts. Thanks.:face-icon-small-coo
Hello MountainCat1, I don't personally have any experience with the Skinz Spindle Pad, but while developing the
DuraPro™ Ski Dampener I do have quite a bit of recent experience testing the Polaris dampener rubbers. So I can offer my 2 cents into that.
There are several reasons that the existing dampeners are failing, but the MAIN reason is because the geometry allows them to be "squished" beyond their compressive stress limits. Their failure has mostly to do with travel, not force as I'll explain below.
In actuality, adding
any type of material underneath the dampener, by means of a support or by filling the voids in the Gripper Ski, actually exacerbates the problem by slightly increasing the compressive strain curve. In other words, flexing the ski the same amount as before the modification now puts even more stress on the dampener, which will lead to even less life.
However, the reason that some people might see a slight increase in life of the dampener while adding material underneath it, is because they have in a round-about-way increased the "rigidity" of the dampener. The ski is now more difficult to flex, so the travel is therefore less, and this equates to less compression on the dampener. Less compression = longer life (at the expense of not having as much ski travel).
To further explain, here's an example:
Gripper Ski #1 has a standard OEM dampener and is Unfilled underneath the dampener (aka "the unfilled ski").
Gripper Ski #2 has a standard OEM dampener and is filled underneath the dampener (aka "the filled ski").
Taking both skis and flexing them a certain
amount, let's say 10" up on the tip, will take more force with the filled ski than with the unfilled one, and at the same time, the dampener will fail sooner in the filled ski than the unfilled one.
However, take both skis and flex them a certain
force, let's say 200# up on the tip, the filled ski will travel less than the unfilled one, and at the same time the dampener will fail sooner in the unfilled ski than the filled one.
For the best of both worlds and for less moo-la, :face-icon-small-ton why not check out:
https://www.snowest.com/forum/showthread.php?p=4106621#post4106621
tell um you gunna go postal!! that will get them going...or maybe the feds will bring them by all prompt like 
