AmSnow.com is now SnoWest.com
Handling on a sled is a mystery to most, an elusive quality that, in most cases, has been just a description by reviewers and riders. I wanted to spend some time quantitively comparing sleds and how they handle. Not so much how they “feel,” but compare the data of various consumer sleds that we often see on the trail. I tested on the same day and conditions comparing ‘Steady state cornering’.
This is an important handling attribute on the trails every ride and is defined as the sled’s ability to track through a corner and hold a desired line. We tested out three modern sled chassis, actual consumers sleds, as they would be used on the trail.
The guinea pigs
The three sleds tested were a 2012 Rush 800 Pro-R with 4-inch stock carbides and two studs per window on the track, a 2013 F1100 Turbo Sno Pro with 4-inch carbides, two studs per window on the track, and a 2014 Renegade 800 X with the stock carbides, with two studs per window on the track.
The trio of sleds had a comparable quality level suspensions with the F1100 being a Sno Pro, the Rush being an ‘R’ and the Renegade being an ‘X’ package. That being said, we did not modify any front preload shock settings to help the sleds corner better than they would be set up for normal trail riding. We wanted to leave the sleds in an as-ridden, on-trail set up. Not in some “tweaked for absolute cornering ability” settings that really have no real world application.
Our goal was to follow the AmSnow Real World testing example and let the numbers show what they would.