side by side skis
I setup the newski and the oldski for some side by side comparison.
I didn't flip the skis over because its a bitxx to get the mounting bolt through the ARO, you have to compress the rubber bumper some........which is a really good thing, but hard to do.
This is a setup on my 2013 KTM 500, the old ski is off this bike. The setup on the old ski to make it handle is different than a KTM 450 sx or a WR450 Yam or a KTM 300 or Honda 450 or RM450, that I know. So one upside to the new ski for me is , without any mods the steering and handling is great right out of the box. On any of the wide ratio models of KTM with kickedout fork rake, the oldski needs a lot of help to get it to be just ok as far as twitchy bitchy rut grabbing. Honda, Kaw YaMYZ, MX steep fork angle bikes, the ski was not horrible but bringing the ski mount bolt back to about 1.75 inches was still a big help.
To make my KTM 500xcw handle with the old ski and its kicked out fork rake I had to swing the ski spindle back so I had 2.5- 3.0 inches of lets say caster or in other words ski mounting bolt 2-3 inches behind the fork axel.........refer to all the old threads. My current ARO setup is stock mounting, and stock mounting on an SX I believe the ski works better than it does on my 500xcw, so in the future I will drill new holes in the ARO and give myself a little more caster to closer approximate my pals and their MX bikes ARO mounting.
Floor to center of the axle the ARO is about 1.25" taller. The comparison here, some of the difference is the tall ARO dual threat center skag.
Tip of ski to ski mount bolt, the ARO is back maybe .900, so close to and inch.
OLD ski 10" wide , New ski 11 9/16" wide.
The new pedestal is only about .400 of an inch taller from center to center ski spindle to axle. Because I had to swing my ski mount back on the 500xcw for caster it effectively lowered my ride height another 3/4 of an inch on the old ski. The new pedestal puts the pedestal on all bikes in a more straight up position and better yet handles durn good in that upright position, unlike the oldski.
So keep in mind the TS in the pictures is not stock and has been hacked up some.
Oh and another thing, to improve the handling of the old ski we shimmed and tightened the rubber under the ski to limit how easy the ski swings on the ski bolt, the new ski is TIGHT, yeah we like tight, so when you dive into a turn in fluff and especially dense fluff the ski tip doesn't come up hard and your ski acts like a bigflat board brake, trying to stop you. Take out your ski rubber or run a shelled out one for a day, in some conditions its suicidal, you will be on your head constantly.
I think there is still room for improvement here for my 500xcw. I am building a new skeg, again, I will pull the ski back and see how that goes.
