Hyfax - What's wrong with this picture? What's the solution?

[welterracer]

How does your track clips look?? are they chewed up?? If so this could be the reason why they are eating your hyfax

 

[ReX]

Compared to the rear my front wear is almost none. I went up one on the straps and I did loosen my front shock to help with the ratcheting.I took a picture to try to show you the setup. I don't go by 30/35ml anymore. Mine is adj. so once in a blue moon it will ratchet only in powder and only if I hit it from a dead stop. On a packed trail nothing I do will make it ratchet. Did notice that one of my inside wheels has come apart. You can see it in front of the threaded portion of the shock. How do you take it out? Hope you don't have to remove the skid.

Thanks for the pictures. When you say up one on the straps do you mean tighter or looser?

I was just experimenting with my sled and with the limiter tightened all the way and track the same tightness that was 30mm@22lbs with the limiter one hole looser, the track is now incredibly tight with only 27mm@22 lbs.

So for some reason tightening the limiter changes the geometry so it tightens the track (with the sled lifted off the ground). When I put the sled down the track becomes much looser again (checking how tight it is above the rear axle). If I get on it it gets incredibly loose. I found that the more the rear of the suspension compresses the looser it gets (I put a block under the track at the rear and sat on the sled and the track is so loose above the rear axle I'm not surprised it ratchets at all.

On a positive note, I was pleased to find when I checked over my sled carefully that nothing got damaged when the hyfax split. I guess I was lucky and must have caught it shortly after it happened. Also all of the idlers are still perfect as well as all of the suspension bushings (with the exception to the upper bushings on the front pivot arm that are completely gone already). Another thing I was happy to see is there are no areas showing signs of high stress (by having the paint at/near welds flake off). Also I checked the drive sprocket alignment with a digital caliper and they are perfectly positioned.

So - the problem seems to be related to suspension geometry and how the track loosens off as the rear of the suspension is compressed. This is probably going to force us into a certain suspension setup instead of being able to adjust it solely to make the sled handle the way we want.

Thinking about this a bit one solution might be to loosen off the limiter and reduce the weight transfer. I think this will both loosen the track when the suspension is unloaded and keep it tighter when accelerating hard. There will still be a point where just the front of the skid is compressed a little that will be too tight, but hopefully this won't occur enough to kill the hyfax.

I'll do some more experiments...

 

[ReX]

How does your track clips look?? are they chewed up?? If so this could be the reason why they are eating your hyfax

I wondered that myself so I checked them all carefully. They look almost perfect (minor scratching and polishing from snow and fine abrasives in the snow). Not one is chewed up.

Also if you look at the first picture I posted you can see that the hyfax is actually wearing fine along the bottom of the skid. It only wore out at the curve of rail which I believe is from running the track too tight (to reduce the ratcheting).

 

[Mikecam]

When you say up one on the straps do you mean tighter or looser?

I went 1 hole tighter.

 

[ReX]

When you say up one on the straps do you mean tighter or looser?

I went 1 hole tighter.

That's what I was running when my hyfax wore out at the curve...

 

[welterracer]

REX what brand of HYFAX are you using??

I just recently installed a set of parts unlimited aftermarket hyfax on my sled.. and they are half warn already after 300 miles..

They YAMAHA Hyfax have Graphite in them... I do not think the cheap aftermarket stuff does..

 

[Mikecam]

Rex where do you have the front shock set at. I had all my wear in the first 300 miles. After that I installed the studs and backed off the front shock 1/2 inch off of stock setting. Have almost 1700 miles now. Backing off the front shock really seemed to help the sled over the little chop bumps too.

 

[ericsno]

my first set of hyfax wore out at 500 miles,i have 1500 and these are about halfway wore out,i lossened the kimiter strap one hole to get the front end lighter,i think ill take mine to the dealer tommorow i think the exhaust broke off somewhere its backfiring all the time and sled is getting much louder.

 

[ReX]

Rex where do you have the front shock set at. I had all my wear in the first 300 miles. After that I installed the studs and backed off the front shock 1/2 inch off of stock setting. Have almost 1700 miles now. Backing off the front shock really seemed to help the sled over the little chop bumps too.

Most of my suspension settings are stock. The only thing I did was tighten the limiter by 1 hole, crank up the torsion springs to H and very slightly reduce the weight transfer setting.

You might be on to something with backing off on the center preload but one problem I am having also is too low a ride height. With the torsion springs on H, after riding about 300 miles in cold weather (-25C) lots of ice built up in the tunnel (as expected). Unfortunately there was so much weight that my rear bumper was sinking 8" from the fully extended suspension height. With it like this I had to crank up the shock, making the ride very rough to keep it from bottoming out and even more importantly to reduce the kick-back from the anti-bottomers. Once the ice melts out the sled rides great again. Also on warmer days like yesterday there wasn't any problem with ice build up and ride height (exhaust keeps it melted).

Brian, I have always run stock Yamaha hyfax on my Yamaha's but if this one goes through them fast I'll probably start running cheap aftermarket hyfax until I figure out how to resolve these issues.

 

[studdog]

Bad skid design! Yamaha has been burning up Hyfax for many years on a variety of suspensions. Lots of heat buildup throughout skid at speed. Just my opinion and I could be wrong. None of the other OEM's have this problem.

 

[gkw]

I posted a couple weeks ago about this:

I just installed my fifth set (including the original) set of HiFax on my Attak. This was at 4500 miles.

Last year, I installed the Ice Ripper track, Fully clipped and it was still wearing too fast. This year I added a rear heat exchanger, extra wheel set and Yamaha slipppery HiFax. These only ran about 500 miles..

<<Note - all my riding is in Quebec. Snow coverage has NEVER been a problem.>>

There is some sort of heat build up in colder temps where the snow doesn't melt quick enough or doesn't have the moisture?

At any rate, I installed a set of HyPerfax Teflon slides and after 500 miles, I cannot see ANY WEAR. No binding, no plastic smell early in AM, in short - Problem solved!!

GW

 

[VT_BluYamaha54]

I've been having trouble with track ratcheting and after experimenting with tightness of the track (tightening it up until it stops ratcheting - or at least gets it mostly under control) I found I need to run it at the tight end of Yamaha's spec. Even here it will still ratchet a little in deep snow and in certain snow conditions.

The spec is 30-35mm gap with 22 lbs on the track (on most of my sleds I adjust it to the looser end of the spec and let it get looser from there until I check it again several 100 or ever a 1000 miles later).

So - since the track needs to be run this tight to control ratcheting and that (if I am correct) leads to rapid hyfax wear at the curve I have a problem.



Here is a thread on the ratcheting:

http://www.ty4stroke.com/viewtopic.php?t=39924

Are you sure it is actually ratcheting or could it just be the "clunking noise" the ProAction makes when it "cocks" backward on acceleration? There was allot of discussion about this a couple of years ago. It would seem that if it was ratcheting, you would start to see evidence in the track lugs pretty quickly(?)

 

[Yammerhead]

Stumbled across this on ArcticChat. I believe you have to be logged in to see the pics, but it is a neat idea. Kinda tempted to try it for slide wear and an efficiency perspective.



http://www.arcticchat.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8780

 

[snowsdog]

In Pellston this weekend and checking over my 06 RTX with the mono had the exact same problem. Hyfax worn to nothing at the curve, last weekend they were fine. Mine has the heavy spring, but all else is stock. I monitored it with the wife riding it and it got no worse with 150 additional miles. I dropped it at the dealer there to have them changed and a few other warranty things taken care of. Normally I change them myself, but no time between now and my 5 day bag trip coming up in a few days.
My sled had 700 miles when I discovered the wear, and I will be loosening my track after i pickit up from the dealer for the trip as i will be putting at least that many miles on it.

Now I have had 01 SXR700 and 03 RX1 and had no slide wear issues at all, they wore quick almost to the wear line but never seem to wear any more?

 

[ReX]

Are you sure it is actually ratcheting or could it just be the "clunking noise" the ProAction makes when it "cocks" backward on acceleration? There was allot of discussion about this a couple of years ago. It would seem that if it was ratcheting, you would start to see evidence in the track lugs pretty quickly(?)

100% positive.

If I keep tightening the track up the ratcheting pretty much goes away (when it is tightened right up it only happens at full throttle in very deep show drifts or when you suddenly get better traction). The place where I find it the worse is accellerating hard on a lake where the drifted snow makes the traction vary a lot from drifted snow to hard pack to drifted snow to hard pack...

Unfortunately it needs to be right at the tight end of the spec (30mm@22lbs) to get it mostly under control and that's when my hyfax wore out at the curve.

I don't find any clunking noises at all with this suspension. The monoshock is the one that clunks (normal for it).

I'm not letting it ratchet much (as soon as I hear it I back off the throttle and limit the throttle use a little until I get it tightened some more - believe me you can hear and feel it when it skips a cog) so the drive sprockets and track aren't badly damaged yet. There are some signs starting to show on the drive sprockets though.