Wednesday, September 05, 2007

The Jury is still out



This past year I purchased from Mattrack's their M3 tracks for my Polaris Ranger after totally destroying the set of Polaris tracks I purchased when I bought my Ranger. Mattrack's makes 2 different sets of tracks which have a 1" lug and the M3's which are longer, wider, and have 1 7/8" lugs and I thought they would be better for living out here. When I was first looking at them one of the concerns I had was the longer lugs and how they would fare on dirt during the melt out time and I was told that they could handle any type of terrain as long as it was done under 40mph and I figured that would be great because with the tracks on my Ranger will only do 5-7mph because of the torque I have to run in low gear. When I was talking to the sales rep I was told that 60% of the M3 tracks would never see snow and I thought that meant that they were very tough tracks so I ordered them thinking they would be just what I needed to get around out here. I installed them just before going to Texas at the beginning of Nov and drove the ranger up to the dam on the tracks up a dirt road 3 miles. They weren't used again until I returned from Texas when we had 4+' of fluffy snow and drove it back to Trinity. I used them around here for about 2 weeks while we were getting snow days of 1' or more every couple of days and then the day before Thanksgiving we drove the Ranger out to Fish Lake which took us almost 6 hours to go 21 miles, very deep snow that hadn't been groomed so it was difficult to get through but we did until destroying the transmission in the deep snow Thanksgiving day. While I had my Ranger jacked up and was trying to see what was damaged I inspected the tracks and noticed that many of the middle tabs were torn or completely torn off, not only that but I also noticed that some of the big lugs were torn at the base of the lug where it attaches to the track, this really concerned me because if this happened with snow what would happen during the melt out. It took me until Feb to get it back from the shop so for 2 months it wasn't even used but after that I used it some but not all the time especially if I needed to make a quick trip I relied on my snowmobile. By the end of the snow season in June many of the lugs were torn and most of the smaller tabs in the middle of the track were totally torn off making them not as effective as they should be. I was late in getting the information back to Mattrack's but once I sent photos of the damage it was addressed very quickly, and just under the wire for the 1yr warranty so I received the paperwork I needed to fill out and sign and got it back to Mattrack's now I'm waiting to see what will be done to correct this problem. It is getting close to that time of year when they will be needed again for another 6 months of snow. I do like the tracks but definitely need to have more power than what the Ranger can do with the way the motor & transmission are set up . I have some thoughts of how to maybe fix that but it is still in the thinking stage right now. I'll let you know what I find out and how this is handled by Mattrack's.
We found our Paradise, hope you find yours too.

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