hey all,

dakotart and i went ridin' today on his place in bastrop county, texas and we performed a biological experiment that crossed a cat with a bird. believe it or not my 500 auto (650 lbs) and myself (335 lbs) caught some good air. you'll see when dakotart uploads the pics and vids to his web page. now i know what you're thinkin', you classify "good air" as 5-10' off the ground measured at the rear wheels---well you're wrong. my wheels were at best two to three feet off the ground. that's pretty good for a 1000 lb combination of quad and rider. the best part about it was i didn't lose any plastic or otherwise break my cat. that just goes to show that arctic cat is the timex of the quad world--"it takes a lickin' but keeps on tickin'.

on a side note, does my use of contractions bother any of y'all? since i'm from texas i like to type like i talk.

texascat

 

Well, I've gotten roughly 4-7 ft of air out of my cat with out any problems. But the last time I rode my cat I flipped it off of a jump. Hit a 5 ft tall hill doing about 20 mph. I must have been slowing down when I came to the face of the jump because it noised over and when I landed I slid up on the seat can my foot downshifted to 1st gear. That sent me over the handle bars on my back. When I opened my eyes I could see my rear rack coming straight at me, so I rolled out of the way and stood up in time to see the tires and skid plate of my Cat.

When we flipped it over I noticed the handle bars were laid down and the rear rack was slightly bent. I also bent my 2nd gun rack. When I moved the handle bars I thought I had broke a tie rod, but when I looked I had broken the knuckle, with the tie rod being unhurt. When the knuckle broke the wheel turned so hard that my CV joint pulled into two peices.

My Freinds were fairly pissed off at me, even tho they took me to the jump and talked me into jumping after they were doing it, and said that the rear rack came about 6" from my head when I rolled out of the way. After that we loaded up the bike in the trailer and I brought my bike home. The next day was when I realized that I had cracked my brake resivor. I could tell because of all the brake fluid that had leaked over my fenders.

Total damage, could have been 400 bucks, but I went a head and replaced the bearing and seals in the knuckle that broke and ordered a few things that I am changeing since it's down. The CV joint was $250 alone.

 

I'm working on the web page as we speak. My students freak out when I showed them our adventure. Should be up and running tonight or tomorrow night. Check back.

Dakota R/T