redline nears production and delivery

With its initial 30-some dealers signed and the units booked, Redline is nearly ready to roll units off the production floor and onto the sales floor. "We expect to be building by November," explained Redline's National Sales Manager Robert Massey. "We have some final testing and calibrating to do, but we expect to be ready for dealer deliveries in early December."

By the end of the year, Massey says he plans to have his dealer network built up to 100. "We'll be taking orders in the spring for our year two sleds," he said. "In order to be ready for that, I want to have every one of our dealers up to speed on our sleds, our technology and our company's program."
 
With that kind of goal in place, don't expect to see any Redlines at the races this season. "I'd love to go racing," said Massey. "But at this point, we cannot afford to take our eyes off the path. We need to build and sell snowmobiles first and foremost. If we went racing, we'd be forced to take time and personnel resources away from our consumer production process."

We invited ourselves into the demo sled on display at a recent snowmobile consumer show. On first glance, we were impressed with how close the production tooling resembled the conceptual renderings we saw two years ago.

"We were able to stay close to our original vision for the body work because the design team worked with the engineers from day one," explained spokesman Chris Rodewald. "In the auto industry, you'll go to a show and see some far out futuristic concept vehicle. But you'll never see it that way in dealerships because it wasn't designed for production. They're put together by styling artists. We approached our conceptualization from a production mindset. This is what we came up with. Hopefully it meets consumer expectations."
 
Once we got past the heavily guarded barriers to the display sled, we noted something was missing: the coverup shroud on the clutches, present on the sleds since day one. "Oh that," said Massey. "We didn't want people to see our Clutch Isolation System until the ink at the patent office dried."

Redline's CIS is a unique way to link the engine with the clutches, without mounting the primary directly to the crankshaft. It consists of a pair of billet cogs which lace together to form a single rubber-dampened unit, one half connected to the engine, the other to the primary. "The CIS gives us a couple of distinct advantages over conventional transmission setups," explained Massey. "We do not mount the primary to the motor. This allows us to rigidly support the clutch to the chassis. By doing that, we maintain our clutch alignment, which prolongs belt life."

Another advantage of the CIS is cooler clutch temps. "We found a significant percentage reduction in clutch temperature by using the CIS," continued Massey. "As it turns out, the majority of the heat on the sheaves comes from energy transmitted from the crankshaft. By isolating the two parts, we have taken temps down so much that we can fully enclose the clutches and not worry about heat buildup."
 
The roller secondary is connected to a gear box, which is connected to the drive axle. "Our goal is to reach sixty percent efficiency with our chassis package. That includes the CIS, our helical gear system, three-point rotation for the track and other components," said Massey. "So with our 800 twin putting out about 135 horsepower, we hope to be getting 81 horsepower to the track. If you were to put 81 horsepower to the track on a conventional setup, which runs roughly forty percent efficient, you'd need 202 horsepower at the engine."

The T-15 rear suspension also changed since last we saw the Revolt on display. "We added a short arm to facilitate weight transfer," Massey explained. It's a simple concept, similar to how Arctic Cat, Ski-Doo and Polaris handle weight transfer, but different. Unlike the others' versions, Redline's concept adds an elastomer damper shock to the equasion to smooth out the transfer.

With production and delivery dates very near, we're hoping to see an occasional 800 Revolt stalking the trails soon, preferably in our riding group! Be sure to stop by the Redline booth at the Minneapolis snow show this weekend and check out the company's snocross sled, as well as the production Revolt.