Here's the scene, an abondend gravel pit with plenty of steep hills, big loose rocks, long straight lanes and steep hills with loose gravel, bright sunny day, no wind, warm, the perfect area and day to try different things on the new H1 to get a feel for her. I decided to put her through her paces on all of the differenr areas and then change some things and do it over again, just to see what works best for me. Does everyone follow me so far? Round 1- very much fun, work very well with the dealers settings for suspension. Let's grab the suspension tool and stiffen the suspension up a bit, that should be a little better for the side hill stuff. I'll just start with 1 notch first, !@#$%& I can't believe that Arctic Cat would give out such a piece of crap for a suspension wrench, I hardly even pulled and it snapped off clean, and I burnt myself on the exhaust as well, the day just got hotter. To make matters worse, when I got home I still wanted to stiffen them up so I grab my channel lock pliers and got ready to give it some torque. To my surprise they turned fairly easily which makes me more mad that the supplied wrench would break so easily on something that did not require that much torque to turn in the first place. All in all, those old gravel pits are a blast to ride no matter what you ride.

 

channel lock pliers ---made in my hometown
Arctic Cat suspension wrench----made in???could it be ching chang communist China

 

What really gets me is it wasn't even the little lip on it to grab the slot that you would think would break first, NOOOOO, it was the damn HANDLE that broke!!!!

 

Channel locks and WD-40 (nothing like a little lube) and taking the weight off the suspension helps alot.

 

Haha! I was hoping I wasn't the only one!
I did the same thing the other day with my Dad's 650 V2.
The Handle broke and my hand got jammed back there pretty good and got all cut up.
My Dad fixed it later with some pliers though, and now we keep them under the seat instead of the tool.

- OneWolf

 

how do you guys have your suspension set? I have my fronts turned up one notch from the stock setting and the back turned down one setting. What about you?

 

I weigh at least 350 lbs.(at least that is as high as my scale goes to) so I have all 4 as stiff as they go, because when I get moving around on that thing, the suspension tends to move a little as well.

 

At least it was your wrench! One of the teeth on the shock itself broke off of mine! Of course stupidly my girlfriend was sitting on it, not that shes fat, 130lbs, but thats enough i guess to break it. Follow Bears post like i should have !

 

[[{{I weigh at least 350 lbs.(at least that is as high as my scale goes to) so I have all 4 as stiff as they go, because when I get moving around on that thing, the suspension tends to move a little as well. }}]]

Hey Rooch

I'm touching 300 you need to install the AC sway bar A !


Shonk

 

Hey Shonk, I have heard of them but do they help alot or do they take away any ground clearence or do they have any negative effects at all. I have to justfy all my add-ons to the wife because she can't (won't) understand why I need all this stuff on a brand new machine.