By: Motorhead Mark Lester

What is ski-lift? In elementary terms it looks like this: You set up for a turn then suddenly, without warning, your sled hops up onto one ski and all your predetermined reflexes require instantaneous recalculation. You compensate for what feels like a sled about to roll.

Most often you lean harder to the inside and instinctively dial in less turn angle. This puts the sled on a wider arc through the turn. If the trees are coming up too quickly, a handful of brake will reel things in. All this is accomplished in an instant thanks to your amazing reflexes.

Sometimes inside ski-lift is desirable. In fact, no sled corners perfectly flat all the time. Reality is this: a low CG and a low roll centre (the theoretical longitudinal center of the sled) generally produce the best cornering response. In other words, if the CG and roll-centre are in the sweet spots, inside ski lift is a manageable and most importantly, predictable reaction to an aggressive clip through the twisties.

It’s no secret this year the Yamaha Nytro displayed some ski-lift. The Nytro’s handling was by design very edgy and aggressive requiring sharp reflexes if the throttle was wicked in tight trails.

Although the Nytro is the lightest ‘08 4-stroke sled, it does have what appears to be a fairly high CG. This cannot be changed with over-the-counter parts. After we spent some time with the sled, we wanted to slow down the handling a bit and keep things more level.

First we touched up shock air spring pressure then zoomed-in on the skis, trying a number of things to ease initial turn-in. Different ski profiles and carbide combos led us in different directions. However, we stumbled onto a product so convincing we were amazed. Snow Tracker (snowtracker.com) makes a “self sharpening” carbide runner that bolts onto Nytro skis in addition to a weird looking steel “U” plate.

Honestly, the whole thing looks so strange we had serious doubts about its ability to do what was promised. We were wrong. The concept is sound and while some engineers we’ve spoken to believe Snow Trackers increase steering effort under some circumstances (they are correct) this, in our opinion, is a small trade-off for the improvement in stability and linear, controlled turn-in. The Snow Trackers hold a precise line when entering corners so darting no longer interferes with your steering inputs.

There are other ways to soften initial turn-in and control darting on not only a Nytro but any dart prone sled by using dual carbides and different ski profiles.

Clearly the move to multiple tracking points on ski bottoms (like the Simmons design, BRP’s Pilot and Precision models) have a profound effect on controlling unwanted darting and thus reducing ski-lift.

My point here is this: There’s a lot of great sleds in the market that have varying CG and roll centers. You cannot easily alter these built-in chassis parameters once you take your sled home. However, the inputs from dart-prone skis that initiate ski-lift and aggravate darting can be altered.

More answers have come as we’ve racked up miles this winter. We’ve installed USI boards with Stud Boy Shaper Bars on a couple of sleds and seen huge improvements.

Our Jaguar Z-1 and F-8 Arctic Cats have the inverse of darty behavior. They display annoying understeer or “push”. By bolting on a more aggressive ski we’ve turned these sleds into confidence inspiring trail rides. Interestingly, Arctic Cat has made significant geometry changes to the ’09 Twin Spar platform to rid the F of understeer. In a similar way Yamaha has reconfigured the Nytro’s front end geometry and it too is vastly settled for MY 09.

Another interesting discovery was the use of USI skis and Stud Boy Deuce Bars (double runners) on our Vector LTX 136. The sled handled quite well out of the box but clearly the skis were dart-prone and created unnecessary inside ski-lift in twisty trails.

The ski and skag combo virtually eradicated darting on tracked-up trails. Initial turn-in was softened somewhat but, by mid-turn, the Veck was happy and biting predictably to the exit.

We’ve had more inquiries about this topic than ever before in a year when more sledders have been on the snow than in recent memory.

There’s more ways to reduce inside ski-lift than just those mentioned here. Lowering front ride height and altering ski pressure, not to mention dialing in a little toe-out (toe-in is guaranteed to produce darting regardless of skis, carbides or any other set-up), are effective ways to generate handling improvements.

Here’s what we know for sure. A little fiddling and maybe a set of carbides or skis can net a big improvement in the way your Snow Bullet clips apexes.

The issue requires some patience, a rudimentary understanding of where you’re at and what direction you need to go in order to get improvements.

By: Kent Lester

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank GreenPeace and all those Hollywood liberals who have been portending global warming the last few years. Obviously their rants have worked and the tide has turned. This has been the coldest, snowiest winter in years. The earth has cooled off and it’s all because of them. Keep up the good work.

If I sound a little tongue in cheek, please forgive me. Frankly, I’m sick of having bad science shoved down my throat and tired of listening to politicians being influenced by environmental lobbies with big dollar agendas.

Furthermore, I’m fed up of being told the combustion engine is responsible for all the world’s eco-ills when the real scientific evidence indicates otherwise. The global warming issue is the hottest political debate in decades and the fear-mongering being propagated is making me nauseous.

I’m tired of movie stars and washed up Presidential candidates dictating truth. Of course, as media we’re not allowed to have a contrary opinion – and going against the tide here invokes some pretty strong objections from those who have influence. As a matter of fact, today, non-believers in the fact that combustion engines are causing and contributing vastly to climate change are being categorized as evil and destructive.

David Roberts, of climate website Grist, writes: “when we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage (of climate change), we should have war crimes trials for these (objectors) – some sort of climate Nuremburg.” Sure sounds like freedom of thought to me.

Fact: In the last 100 years the globe has warmed a bit. The change has been approximately 0.74 degrees Celsius with a plus-minus factor of 0.18 degrees (a 25 percent margin of error). If you go beyond the 100 year past, it’s really hard to verify numbers because of the lack of good historical data and primitive meteorological information gathering back then. Yes, the climate is changing – but also, yes, the climate has always been changing.

Okay, suppose we all need to drive hybrids and heat our homes with solar energy and windmills. Noble thought but, here’s a sobering fact: Just the increase in the amount of coal China will burn every year by 2020 will produce as much carbon dioxide as would be burned by 3 billion full sized Sport Utes (likely with 4-wheel drive).

A report released by the UN in 2006 (not talked about much, by the way) stated that the livestock industry is responsible for 18 percent of all greenhouse gases – more than the entire transportation sector worldwide.

Furthermore, livestock is responsible for 65 percent of the release of nitrous oxide into the atmosphere – a greenhouse gas that warms the planet over 250 times more than carbon dioxide. Lets not even talk about methane.

Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of natural Sciences claims the most recent oceanic data indicates the earth has passed the peak of its warmer period (0.74C) and that solar activity such as sunspots and solar flares, which have been around forever (literally) and wax and wane over time, are having the greatest effect on the climate.

Oh, and by the way, go ahead and ask me for factual references on these statements – I’ve got ‘em. But if I was an eco-warrior I’d be able to make any statement, no matter how radical, without references and it would be accepted as fact by every politician who has ambitions and every six o’clock newscaster with an opinion.

So, is the ‘global cooling’ trend something we’re just seeing in North America? According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil: “a brutal cold wave (last year) brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow and major energy disruption.” In Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years. Last August, Chile’s agriculture minister lamented “the toughest winter we’ve seen in 50 years.” In 2007, Johannesburg, South Africa experienced its first significant snowfall in a quarter century, Australia had its coldest ever June and New Zealand’s vineyards lost much of their 2007 harvest when spring temperatures dropped to record lows.

The Boston Globe reports: “ it’s no surprise that 2007 didn’t turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007’s global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 – and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though carbon dioxide accumulation is up by about 4 percent from 1998, the global mean temperature has remained flat. That fact raises some serious doubts about the theory that C02 is the cause of climate change.”

I’m a strong proponent of cleaning up snowmobile engines. I believe it’s been a good thing for the industry and a good thing for the environment.

Amazing engineering feats like the development of clean 2-strokes and the advent of 4-stroke technology has proven this business to be adaptive and innovative. It has responded incredibly quickly and is delivering technology that goes beyond what is required.

But please, somebody tell the politicians to stop whipping the boys who have already gotten it done.