Camoplast Tatou 4S ATV Track Conversion Kits; Free Shipping!

Comments:
Got the Demo Track Kit: It was shipped from the manufacturer by truck. The packaging was very good and the parts were very clearly marked with part numbers. I am studying the installation instructions. They look fairly simple to install on my 2005 Honda Rubicon.

Comments:
Waiting until the snow starts to fall before putting on the tracks. I want to ride some more this fall with tires.

Comments:
I got time to install the tracks on my 2005 500 Rubicon. The parts were all in the kit. I followed the instruction manuals and in a couple of hours I had them installed. The fine tuning of the tracks and changing the tie-rod alignmnet on the Honda took a little bit longer and I had to cut off some plastic from the fenders. All in all the installation was a straight forward project that anybody could do. I set the front tracks at 254 mm just as I was instructed. They run great and I was amazed at how easy they steer. I plan to give them a good test in the snow this weekend

Comments:
After installing and tuning the Tracks, we took them out for their first trip over snow. Along for the ride was Dan Cross and Dempsey O'Neil in Dan's Rhino 700, also with Tatou 4S tracks installed. The tracks were smooth and surprisingly easy to steer. Speed on the Rubicon was significantly reduced from it's speed on tires. I held the speed at 30 mph or below on the speedometer as per the break-in instructions. I need to check the speed with a GPS, but I estimate that the actual ground speed is about half of the speed indicated on the speedometer. I climbed some fairly steep hills with amazing traction.

About 8 miles into the ride, my left rear track fell off of the rear hub spacer. Upon inspection, I found the studs in the spacer had unscrewed out of their bores. We luckily found two of the studs in the snow and borrowed a couple of nuts off of the other wheels and remounted the track on the spacer. We carefully took the machine back to our trail head and loaded it up.

Monday morning I called Camoplast in Quebec and promptly got someone in Customer Service. I explained what had happened. He asked me if there had been any damage to the track or the quad and I replied that there had not been any damage save the loss of the studs and nuts. He told me the studs were supposed to be installed with Red Locktite into the spacer bores at the factory. He assumed that maybe that had not been done properly. He assured me that they would Fed-Ex the parts to me Monday afternoon for Tuesday delivery.

I will pull both back tracks off and replace the studs on the left side and inspect the studs on the right side and give it another test next weekend, weather permitting. I will also re-torque all of the track mounting bolts before going out again.

I will also be taking more tools than last time. If Dan had not had his tools, we would not have been able to repair it and drive it out.

Comments:
We spent last weekend riding the Honda Rubicon with the Tatou 4S tracks in new snow. We also had a new Argo Avenger HDi equipped with rubber tracks. The Honda performed flawlessly in every condition we tried. The Tatou 4S tracks seem to take a lot of power to run, as we noticed a big increase in fuel consumption over running the Honda with tires. One issue I had was with the Honda Rubicon. Although I love the hydrostatic transmission with tires on, it is too slow to backshift with the tracks. I found when I tried to climb, it would lug down until the transmission would backshift, then it would climb just fine. I actually found that I prefer to put the transmission in the manual mode when the going got tough, and I was able to react much quicker getting it downshifted than in the auto mode. I checked the mounting bolts after this outing and everyone was tight. The problem with the first outing was that the factory had failed to install the mounting studs in the rear spacers properly. I received the new studs, installed them with red Loctite, and left them by the fire all night. That solved the problem. Steering on the Rubicon is a bit challenging in deep snow. They really do fine until you need to do tight turning. They also are real hard to steer when backing up. That is probably real normal, as they are set up with the fronts lighter and more weight on the tails. Cruising along, it steers better than I had expected. I had an early set of Matt Tracks and they were much harder to steer. The way Camoplast tracks are stabilized to the ATV is the key to the handling. I followed the recommended setup and they really work great.

Although they are two very different over-snow machines, I wanted to make a comparison between the ATV with Tatou 4S tracks and the Argo Avenger. First of all there is a huge difference in capacity between the 2 vehicles, the ATV is a single rider machine. The Argo Avenger will comfortably carry 4 people and if you try, you can fit 6. The Argo also has much more track surface on the snow. On this trip, I operated the ATV with the prescribed one operator. The Argo had some picnic gear in the back and 2 people on board. The two machines were really more alike in their performance than different. The speeds in new snow were very similar at about 12-14 MPH. On packed trail adn downhill, they would both get up to the top speed of about 20 MPH. In the conditions we encountered, the ATV seemed to "hook up" on the snow better. The heavier ground pressure seemed to provide more traction. The ARGO with it's lighter ground pressure seemed to spin a bit while climbing, but continued up the hill while spinning. The ATV took a steeper hill to make it spin, but forward motion stopped when it did spin. All in all, the 2 machines went anywhere we wanted to go. The big difference will be realized if one should ever fall throught he ice. The ATV is going to the bottom and the operator is going to be in trouble! The Argo would float in the same situation, and the passengers would be safe and dry. This weekend we will be using the ARGO and doing some ice fishing.