Weight transfer & flat cornering - Is it possible?

[mdkuni]

Since my Apex is being fixed right now (bad exhaust gaskets and pipe) I ended up taking my Dad's 2000 Venture 500 out this weekend. What a different experience that was! I remembered very quickly how to drive the sled. It was incredible. I put my skis from my Apex on the sled since I switched to Project X USI skis on my Apex.

I could fly through the corners twice as fast on the Venture compared to my Apex. It was a complete joy to ride. Very stable and only small amounts of ski lift on occasion. Granted the power was nothing compared to my Apex. The Ventures wide open speed is my cruising speed on the Apex. And the hit is not there. It is very smooth though.

My Apex is set more towards the max transfer. I love weight transfer going over moguls and hills. Although it hurts the ability of the sled to corner hard. My question is, can I have the best of both worlds or close to it with the Apex? (Flat cornering and good weight transfer) Is backing my transfer down going to be similar to the amount of transfer on the pro action, which is not much at all?

Any suggestions on adjustments?

 

[SledFreak]

If you want it to corner flat you have to set it to min. There is not a sled out that will give you the best of both worlds. Max weight transfer makes the sled get traction and pull hard. Min keeps the sled flat and stable and does not allow the suspension to shift in the direction needed to allow the skid to transfer the hp to the ground. But in my opinion, if you are not drag racing, the sled still has plenty of zip and pulls hard even with the control rod set to min.

 

[yamadoo]

I have both Apex GT and XTC and I wonder if part of your answer is in your discription, the cruising speed on the Apex is up and so you feel ski lift in the corner at much less "percieved speed".

Last year, I felt the same - I could rail corners on my XTC but had some roll and ski lift on the Apex in the corners. Then my son rode the APEX and left me, and I thought I was riding hard on the corners, but it was rough and he just checked out.

I have changed my settings to more lift this year I hope I do not regret it. If so just tighten it back up.

I have heard less WT transfer and bigger sway bars really tighten this up

Yamadoo

 

[ReX]

You can do it, but as usual it's a compromise.

Last season with my 05 RX-1 if I had the weight transfer set to minimum the skis would still "just" come off the ground under heavy throttle on a good hard packed snow while sitting in the normal seating position.

The problem was the skis would lift enough to compromise steering even under moderate acceleration while exiting a corner (even with me as far forward as possible). I just couldn't get the sled to corner while accelerating. On the Apex with it set to minimum the skis pretty much don't lift, but on my sled I had to experiment some more. This (below) does work on Apex's as well (we set up several of my friends sleds the same way and they were very happy with overall performance).

I then started tightened up the limiter strap one hole at a time while increasing the weight transfer to keep a hint of ski lift off the line on hardpacked snow. I ended up with 2 holes tighter (on looser snow 1 tighter worked well) on the limiter and 3/8 ticks on the weight transfer (close to half). By tightening the limiter strap the rear suspension has to not only rock back, but also compress the spring in order rock back (because the front can't droop down as much). By changing how tight the limiter strap is in combination to adjusting the weight transfer you can adjust how much acceleration is needed to lift the skis. Note that the spring you have and how much you weigh has a huge effect on this.

As before the skis come just off the ground under hard acceleration sitting in the normal position, but now it takes much harder acceleration to lift them or me moving my weight to the rear of the sled.

If I lean forward and out to the side as I typically do cornering I could even come out of corners at WOT and still steer. With my weight forward and traction limited by cornering hard the the rear suspension couldn't compress enough to "rock back" (again because the limiter strap wouldn't let the front of the skid droop down).

Also with the limiter tightened up the skis are much more planted in corners. If the sled starts to roll in a corner and tries to lift the inner ski, it doesn't take much before that limiter is stopping the front of the skid from drooping. This puts much more weight on the outside ski which controls the inside ski lift.

Another thing I liked about this setup is over a rise the skis would stay on the ground - again because the limiter won't let the front of the skid droop, while the rear of the skid is still. able to.

For my hard cornering riding style this was the best setup, but it does have a few downsides:

- if you go off a rise and get some air the sled will try to land very nose first. Since only the rear of the skid is able to droop that last inch or so, it pushes the back of the sled up just as you leave the ground. You have to keep the power on before getting air to hope to land flat (I'm not into jumping so not a big deal for me).

- The skis only lift in very good traction conditions and they don't stay lifted for very long. At higher speeds there isn't enough acceleration (power) to keep them up. So you get a good holeshot when there's good traction, but everywhere else there is a bit of a compromise as far as straight line acceleration goes.

I also found tightening the limiter and leaving the weight transfer closer to the middle gave a much better ride than setting the weight transfer at minimum.

I didn't touch the front spring preload, but I did install a 13mm sway bar. After these tweaks I was extremely happy with the cornering and aggressive trail performance.