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STOCK SLEDS
120hp Class
Our first real look at the performance of this year’s crop of production trail sleds was surprising to say the least. Granted, we were running these box-stockers straight out of the crate and onto grass, sand and dirt this year, so things will certainly change once we get on the snow. The sleds we tested included the Arctic Cat ZR 6000 LXR 129 and the Yamaha SR Viper L-TX, both provided by D&D Powersports; the Polaris 600 Rush Pro-S provided by Sports Unlimited; and the Ski-Doo MXZ TNT 600 E-TEC provided by CJ MotorSports. All were running two studs per bar in the track per our specifications. All traction products were provided by
Mack Studs.
On the acceleration course, the Ski-Doo TNT was the 120hp sled to beat! It had the quickest box stock 1000-foot elapsed time of 10.61 sec. and the fastest box stock speed of the 120hp class at 83.48mph. What was surprising was that, of our four 120hp class sleds, the E-TEC in the Ski-Doo ranked third in power after its time on the DynoTech Research dyno. DT owner and longtime Shootout coordinator Jim Czekala had the Ski-Doo sled making just 121hp, while the Polaris made almost 3 more hp, and the Yamaha made 10 more ponies. We say this every year, but the Ski-Doo sleds take longer to pass their self-imposed break-in time, so this sled should be even faster after the break-in counter on the gauge cluster finally reads zero. It was surprising, though, that a smaller power-reading sled did the best in acceleration testing.