are turbos the answer for four strokers

The rumor mill is abuzz with concepts and ideas for building more power out of the four stroke sled engines. While most of them deliver enough useable power for cruising through the woods and down the trail, some riders are already calling for more performance.

Of course, Yamaha has its RX-1 with 140-ish power. Arctic Cat is heavily rumored to be in final testing of a sled with Suzuki's 1000cc GSX super bike engine. That should satisfy the hard core go-fast crowd for a while.

But what about the snowmobiler who likes to just cruise for most of the day but want to hit it now and then? Turbos. It's an easy answer for safe power enhancement without having a lot of extra worries. Four strokes are much easier to turbo charge than tw ostrokes.

The aftermarket has already begun investigating ways to make the strokers run faster. D&D Powersports is reported to have put a turbo kit on one of Cat's 660 4-Stroke sleds last year for testing. Bender Racing is in final R&D on an RX-1 turbo kit. We figure its just a matter of time before a speedster like Marv Jorgenson at Chopper City will put a turbo onto Polaris' Frontier.

But would a manufacturer consider putting a system on a stock sled. We'd bet they have all looked into just that concept. "A turbo can add from 50 to 100 percent more power to a four stroke motor," said Aerocharger's Jim Czekala.

"You would only use a very moderate amount of boost to get that kind of performance increase. Normally to double an engine's horsepower by turbo charging, you would only find the peak cylinder pressure increased by only 20 percent. That's an extremely safe range- especially for the cruising four stroke sleds on the market today. It would be an easy and safe way for an OEM to improve their product without much worry about warranty."

So who will it be? Our money is on Ski-Doo to come to market first. If Yamaha and Cat are going the super bike route, they probably aren't too interested in boosting anything quite yet. Based on conversations with the top brass in Roseau, Polaris seems very hesitant about its four stroke program. That leaves Ski-Doo. While it seems to have its chips on Semi Direct Injection two stroke engines for meeting emissions goals, we'd suspect that the engineering department is also working out ways to make its new 4-Tech V-twin perform up to the tough performance standards snowmobilers have.

So that's our bet. Ski-Doo will be first turbo-enhanced sled to market with a Legend V-1000T. Will it be this year? Maybe. We know they're working on a system. Ski-Doo has offered limited build models off and on over the years and this could be a good candidate for it.