Real-World Sled Weights

Weight is a heavy topic of conversation among snowmobilers this season, mostly due to the new Ski-Doo REV XP-based lineup that shed more than 50 pounds from some models.

For 2008, three manufacturers provide a listed weight for their machines in product brochures and Web sites. The fourth manufacturer — who, until recently, boasted its weight figures — doesn’t provide weight data in brochures or on the Internet.

To find out how much the machines actually weigh when they’re ready for the trail, we hit-up three snowmobile dealerships near Minneapolis, Minnesota, to put sleds on our set of Intercomp scales. We asked that the machines be set up and ready for the trail with empty fuel and oil tanks.

The Stores And Their Sleds
Tousley Motorsports in White Bear Lake sells Arctic Cat, Ski-Doo and Yamaha sleds. Gas tanks were empty (we sniff-tested each one) and two-stroke oil reservoirs had about one pint of oil; enough to prime the oil pump. All batteries were filled with acid and installed, four-stroke engines were wet with oil.

Pro Power Sports in Ramsey is an Arctic Cat, Polaris and Ski-Doo dealer. We weighed its empty Polaris IQ Shift, Arctic Cat Z1 Jaguar and F8 Sno Pro. Northway Sports in East Bethel supplied the other Polaris machines listed in this story. Three of its sleds had fuel in the tanks, one was empty.

Since we didn’t know how much gas was in the tanks, we filled those sleds to capacity and set them on the scales to get a wet weight. We multiplied 6.133 (weight, in pounds, of one gallon of gasoline) by Polaris’ listed fuel capacities and subtracted that number from the recorded figures to get the corrected weight.

Machines listed in this story were dictated by these dealerships’ inventories in mid-November, 2007. This story is intended to shed light on the actual, trail-ready weight of some 2008 model snowmobiles — it’s not a model-to-model comparison. All machines were stock.

’08 Ski-Doo
(All weights listed in pounds; observed weight/listed weight)
• Summit 800R 154 Everest: 461/439
• MX Z Trail: 423/415
• MX Z 800R Adr.:441/435
• MX Z 600 H.O. SDI Adr.: 443/428
• MX Z 550 X: 463/435
• MX Z TNT: 408/399
• MX Z Renegade 800R X: 467/437

’08 Arctic Cat
(All weights listed in pounds; observed weight only – listed weights not available)
• M1000 153 Sno Pro: 521
• F1000 Sno Pro: 561
• F570: 500
• F1000 LXR: 585
• Crossfire 1000 Sno Pro: 539
• F8 Sno Pro: 544
• Z1 Jaguar: 603

’08 Polaris
(All weights listed in pounds; observed weight/corrected weight/listed weight)
• 700 SwitchBack Dragon: 593/521/498
• 700 HMK 155: 573/502/489
• 600RR: 496/NA/475
• 700 Dragon: 570/498/480
• IQ Shift: 488/NA/466

’08 Yamaha
(All weights listed in pounds; observed weight/listed weight)
• Apex LTX GT: 610/580
• FX Nytro RTX w/reverse: 543/520
• Phazer RTX: 510/489
• RS Vector GT 40th Anniversary: 580/557
• FX Nytro: 547/522

Oddball Stuff
(All weights listed in pounds; observed weight/listed weight
• 2006 SXVenom ER: 537/526
• Polaris Ranger RZR: 983/945
• 2008 Victory Vision Tour Premium: 854/849
**Victory Vision and Ranger RZR were unscientific measurements. Each machine had an unknown amount of fuel in their tanks.