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New sleds are our babies. In their early years they get tons of attention but don’t require a lot of maintenance. As toddlers they get less coddling, and develop into more useful machines as we learn their quirks and personalities. Our sleds often then end up becoming more and more dear to us with age.
In addition, many times sleds that were fussy in their first model year aren’t fully developed until the second or third sibling is produced in subsequent model years. Improvements happen along the way as the sled gets consumer tested.
The great M8
Case in point is the Arctic Cat M8 ProClimb. Its’ first model year’s newness was overshadowed by reliability and handling problems. But hats off to Cat for quickly addressing these problems. In the span of a year they transformed the M8 from a collicky machine into a serious contender in the mountains.
The biggest external changes to the M8 for 2013 were a narrower ski stance and deeper lug track. But underneath the bodywork a whole slew of changes were made in the form of slightly different components and calibration changes. When sidehilling the 2012 M8’s had a bad tendency to drop a ski, sinking the spindle so deep that the sled had a hard time keeping moving, this handling issue has been greatly reduced thanks to the narrower ski-stance and other geometry changes. We attribute much of the improvement to the 2013 M8 to small changes in setup. Cat’s mountain test riders and technicians are constantly working on improving.
Arctic Cat offers several different variations of the M800: a base model M800, a wide front-end M800 HCR, an upgraded M800 Sno Pro and the top of the line M800 Sno Pro Limited. We were lucky enough to get a Sno Pro Limited for our long-term test. It differs from the standard M8 with a powder coated tunnel, cool white bodywork, FOX Float 2 shocks, handguards, goggle bag and tunnel bag. The powder coated tunnel turned out to be a nice feature as the different finish combined with a short heat exchanger reduced the tendency for the tunnel and running boards to accumulate snow. We did notice less snow build up than the other machines in our test fleet and while we didn’t officially test weigh it ourselves our good buddy’s (Rob Kincaid and Dave McClure) at Arctic Cat produced a video discussing the theory. In this video Arctic Cat took the three mountain 800’s and weighed them before and after riding in deep snow, the video showed that while the M800 is the heaviest machine dry it only carries half as much snow weight so on the mountain the M800 weighs about the same as the lightest dry sled in the segment the Polaris Pro-RMK.
The Suzuki built 800 engine used in the M8 has become a legend. It has been around for a while now but continues to impress yearly with great power. The engine has a nice strong powerband and just sings on the top end. We love this engine but sadly we have to wonder how much longer it will be around, Arctic Cat seems to be slowly winding down their relationship with Suzuki. Now that they are building their own 600 2-stroke engine we have to suspect a new Cat-built 800 can’t be too far away.
When it comes to handling bumps and jumps the ProClimb chassis is really in a class of its own. The suspension is plush and is hard to unsettle even in really rough terrain. At the end of the day we always fight to get on the M8 for the trail ride home, just drop the adjustable bars to the lowest setting, hold her open and hang off in the corners. Don’t get us wrong the M8 doesn’t quite corner like a short track but for a mountain sled it does amazingly well on the trail!
Very few drawbacks
One of our biggest complaints with the M8 is the handlebar and controls. Arctic Cat could definitely use some help, the flimsy steel bar flexes a lot and the switch and throttle blocks are really bulky and get in the way. A stiff aluminum bar, relocating the switches to the dash and a new throttle would go a long way to cleaning up the controls and giving the sled a tighter feel. While we don’t care for the handlebar we do like the adjustable riser setup, it is really nice to be able to easily move the bar to better suit different conditions.
We were pleasantly surprised with how much the M800 had been improved over the 2012 model. The suspension, lack of snow build-up and great engine are the highlights of this machine. Every year the sled keeps getting better and we will be testing the new 2014 M8000 this entire winter... we’ll let you know how the Cat boys did with an even newer version in just 8 months time!