Trends / Flavor of the month

[kanedog]

It may depend on how and where you ride.
If you ride trails, smaller hills and are fairly easy on the throttle and back shifting doesn't play a huge role in your riding, then Team clutch may work for a while.
I'm not insulting you, your riding ability or others in anyway so don't get offended.
I agree, yamaha has the best clutching because they didn't go with flavor of the decade, team clutch.
90% of the Polaris pros are blowing $200 belts and if you take off the side panel you will notice a ton of belt dust in the clutch cooling fins. Arctic Cat, same thing. This is not right.
Most people nowadays(I'm older) have no idea how clutching works and they probably don't have the time, need or desire to know. They just take it to the dealer who, 8 of 10 times can't fix the problem anyway. They recommend another $200 belt and out the door you go.
The Aaen book is not outdated at all. The principles are all the same and the clutches he talks about are all used to this day. Poo p85, Team, Yamaha. It has a chart that tells each of your problems and what to do fix them.
DJ's site makes you think. He is not gonna just give you an answer. He wants to help you understand how things work so you will be better educated. Yes, he sells clutch kits but he doesn't push them in his answers and his time and knowledge are done on his own time. He has a real job in the summer.
I did and do all what you said, test, record, think, test, record, think, talk to wise people like some of the old dinosaurs of the clutching world(their words, not mine)and keep improving. Your right, you have to have the desire to wrench when you go out. I figure it's a dying art.
Why is there 200,000 threads on sleds, parts, wraps, tracks etc but only 570 threads on clutching? Certainly all the clutching isn't perfect from the dealer. Dealers have to go with what is cheapest and what will work for the majority.
If you talk to any credible tuner about clutching, their first question will be
"do you a run team clutch?" Then, you chuckle to yourselves and the conversation continues on to what works.
Since I tossed my Team, I have no clutch issues aside from some personal tweaking for my riding style. No belt dust, cool clutches after a long climb, excellent back shifting.
Check out this vid. It's me holding my Turbo WOT on a long, steep climb for about 45 seconds. Notice how I put my bare hand on the secondary sheaves immediately after the torture test. With the Team, I could not touch them and snow would sizzle when I put it on the clutches. It was probably a 1000ft+ vert and its steeper than it looks. It actually looks kinda flat from the camera angle. I assure you, it's not.
As you said, it takes a lot of time, testing, thinking, recording etc. I did spend a ton of time on the clutching so I'm not tooting my own horn or looking for praise, i'm just demonstrating that the amount of time you put into your sled is directly proportional to how well it will work for you.
http://youtu.be/qxvP9i-dTWA

 

[geo]

I don't know if 90% is an accurate number on belt blowers. But, there is more acceptance today of high belt heat so they re-invented the belt to take the heat. I agree it's just a bandage to the problem created by compression secondaries and maybe started by rollers on tortional secondaries leading people to higher spring rates to slow things down.

That was the beginning of the wrong direction IMO.

Aaen book has not had a addendum for decades. The weight profiles, spring selection and even primary clutch types have not been updated. Even the P 85 info is out of date.
The secondary section applies to pre 2000 era for tuning info. The math is the same. This is where you can think out of the box with the Team style clutch. Using his "efficiency first" idea for the secondary you can make a Team run cool and much less weight in the primary than is currently the norm.

I can change my belt with just my hands (like the old days lol) with my Tied set-up. Works great in all mountain situations not just light throttle trail use.

Little off topic now lol.

 

[kanedog]

Heehee, our conversate is totally off topic and we are now officially thread hijackers somewhat! It's kinda slow on snowest with winter gone so we may as well keep going.

I was inflating my figure of 90% belt blowers, I agree. I meant to say that 90% of poo and cat sleds have some sort of clutching issues, belt slippage, heat etc. not necessarily belt blowers. Premature wear would have been a better way to say it.

We are on same page about the acceptance of high clutch/ belt temps. I've never seen such a industry created to bandaid a fixable heat problem. Vents, expensive belts, bigger finned clutches(cat). Somebody's getting rich somewhere.

I didn't even notice Aaen didn't have a section on team rollers, prolly because i dont run one. I'm glad that you got your team to work for you. I've had friends spend almost a $1000 on helix's, springs etc and now the whole shabang sits on their garage floor.

Omg, you totally made me reminisce about changing belts in the old days. I use to have a cat roller and I could remove my belt in 1-2 seconds by pushing on the roller with my right hand and peeling the belt off with my left. I shoulda tried out for a race pit crew as chief belt changer!

A cool thing about the old days theme is that if you look close at my video, the part where I touch my clutch, check out the secondary. My sled is 2013 but I have installed the old style Polaris button clutch!! It works well for me. There's a tidbit of info for us old timers!!!!
Cheers!