Does a sleds weight really matter? If you climb on a sled and it works and does everything that you want it to do, does it matter what the weight is?
If you found the perfect sled and then found out that it was heavy, would you not purchase it? Or would you get rid of your perfect sled if a lighter weight model simply because of that number?
Personally, I climb on a sled and ride it. Either I like it or I don't. I really don't care what the weight is.
I have seen guys buy a new sled based on weight and noticed that they don't ride any better. They do bring up the weight of their sled a lot though. This is somehow important and helpful, but I haven't been able to figure out how.
I suspect most of this argument is driven by brand loyalty. It seems that the ones that argue the weight issue most adamantly are those who ride the sleds with the lowest published weights. I also think that these published weights are skewed a bit. When Anchorage Yamaha weighed sleds last season, I was surprised at the weight of some of these lightweight sleds.
All sleds are heavy when they are stuck. I've helped dig out sleds from all manufactures and it's a pain in the azz regardless of who built the sled. Trenching in sucks no matter what you ride. And a sled is real heavy when there is a mechanical failure and you aren't able to ride it out. Taco a tunnel, lose an A-arm or have a problem with getting power to the track and that 400 pound sled is crazy heavy.
I feel that weight is a number. A metric that doesn't tell the whole story about a sled's performance. Power, flotation, geometry and weight distribution are all factors in a sled's performance. The total weight of a sled is irrelevant. It is even more irrelevant when the difference is less than the weight of a half rack of beer that many of us often have in our packs when we hit the hills.
As you may have noticed, I haven't specified any brand names here. Perhaps this thread would be better suited for the General Snowmobiling section, but this topic seems to be prevalent in this section, so that's where I'm posting it.
Ride on.
If you found the perfect sled and then found out that it was heavy, would you not purchase it? Or would you get rid of your perfect sled if a lighter weight model simply because of that number?
Personally, I climb on a sled and ride it. Either I like it or I don't. I really don't care what the weight is.
I have seen guys buy a new sled based on weight and noticed that they don't ride any better. They do bring up the weight of their sled a lot though. This is somehow important and helpful, but I haven't been able to figure out how.
I suspect most of this argument is driven by brand loyalty. It seems that the ones that argue the weight issue most adamantly are those who ride the sleds with the lowest published weights. I also think that these published weights are skewed a bit. When Anchorage Yamaha weighed sleds last season, I was surprised at the weight of some of these lightweight sleds.
All sleds are heavy when they are stuck. I've helped dig out sleds from all manufactures and it's a pain in the azz regardless of who built the sled. Trenching in sucks no matter what you ride. And a sled is real heavy when there is a mechanical failure and you aren't able to ride it out. Taco a tunnel, lose an A-arm or have a problem with getting power to the track and that 400 pound sled is crazy heavy.
I feel that weight is a number. A metric that doesn't tell the whole story about a sled's performance. Power, flotation, geometry and weight distribution are all factors in a sled's performance. The total weight of a sled is irrelevant. It is even more irrelevant when the difference is less than the weight of a half rack of beer that many of us often have in our packs when we hit the hills.
As you may have noticed, I haven't specified any brand names here. Perhaps this thread would be better suited for the General Snowmobiling section, but this topic seems to be prevalent in this section, so that's where I'm posting it.
Ride on.
