aftermarket tunnel height

[woody]

I am new to snowmobiling and looking at modifications to my machine. I see that a lot of the aftermarket tunnels are very high at the back giving the sleds a jacked up look. I was wondering what performance gains this achieves. I have been involved in other performance sports, i.e. go-carts and cars and the object there was to lower to improve speed and handling.
Just curious.

 

[Carbon]

its about the track attack angle to the snow,making better traction/floatation,and more clearance for bigger lugs.for the power sleds could be told something else that's what I was learned:d

 

[Modman]

Also, its gets your sled up and out of the snow. Less friction coefficient (drag).

Too high and your ruin your approach angle and put too much ski pressure down.
Too little and you drag the running boards, etc through the snow.

Some guys install an aftermarket tunnel because they want to run a bigger track with more clearance, some want it to look fancy, some do it because the aftermarket tunnels are stronger, some do it for all these reasons.

More clearance in the tunnel means less snow packing in there and less track friction. Some are taller so that helps riding position (sitting more straight up or more forward).

You have to compromise with mountain sleds. They are not track sleds, they usually don't handle like a short tracker and sometimes they don't turn as well (looooong tracks on the ground and not a lot of ski pressure). A mountain sled is typically not designed to "corner on rails", floating in powder is more important, so some cornering ability is sacrificed.

 

[Maverick800XRS]

Pretty much what Modman said.

It gets your running boards out of the snow so they don't drag, this will effectively let you dig a bigger hole without getting stuck (you hope ). Also clearing snow out of the tunnel is a good thing, too much snow packing in there and it takes up HP that should be getting to the ground.

Aftermarket suspensions will usually give you a 2" increase in clearance, aftermarket tunnels usually have their mounts for the suspension lower to raise the tunnel out of the snow and also drop brackets can be purchased from different places that you can bolt onto your stock tunnel to give you an adjustable height increase.

When it comes to mountain machines the more ride height the better (to a certain degree). But with more ride height trail performance will suffer, if your strictly an off the trail kinda guy then you will love the improvement in being able to carve easier and probably get stuck less. Also a sled looks impressive jacked up in the air

Cheers

 

[maxwell]

i agree.

what was mountain magics thinking then.

most of their skid setups are extremely LOW

 

[woody]

Who is mountain magics? I have heard of CR and Van Amberg tunnels.