Installing & testing UTV tracks

so i bought new tracks to install on my utv and i'm heading down to the shop to pick them up and install them for the first time while i was doing my research on tracks i found that there's two major track manufacturers the first one is matt trax located right in minnesota the second one is camsell which is more of an international organization now although they both sell tracks for utvs i found out that there's a big difference in price and according to the person we're going down to meet in a minute a big difference in quality and hey guys if you like this video will you do me a favor and hit that thumbs up button and leave me a comment down below i'd love to hear your guys's thoughts on this all right you guys let's go in and start installing the tracks that is a sharp truck isn't it we're gonna meet up with the owner of motorsports plus we're gonna get these tracks put on high candy dirt monkey eye candy hey question for you oh guys hey this is jeff owner of motorsports plus also the host of a tv show what's the show you host uh sweathead 24 7. yeah so with these tracks are these fronts and backs lefts and rights or are they just anywhere you want to put them yeah no they are fronts and back slips and you know there's they're labeled you know this you gotta when you go to replay you know put them on they're actually tagged what's front you know front right rear right so there's no rotating these things [Laughter] now i went with the cam so tracks which cost me about 5500 out the door installed this is the less expensive version between the two companies now the machine this is going on is technically a gravely jsv or job site vehicle but this is nothing more than a polaris ranger with different stickers on it and set up more for work so here's what it looks like after it's been installed so you can see that that bolt won't come up this is the plate i have never got to see inside one of these engines before that's actually kind of cool this bolt you know is ready that we'll be able to take this just leave it on here till we get the track up and we'll get that in place okay is the procedure the same for the front or is there a different procedure it's just it's pretty much the same but it's a the design the plate they use is a is a double uh sandwich the a arm fits up on the bottom of the arm this goes to the top and it sandwiches in between okay this is what it actually looks like installed that's the and we're going sandwich take this off because that's throwing off our ability to grab onto the plate and look at that it lines right up there [Music] this is the steering limiter which is it's important with the track so you adjust it so you're not you got to limit the steering slightly on these so you don't hit the frame turn on the frame and once we get it all in place we'll have to uh your experience with tracks on a utv jeff does it does it drag dramatically decrease turning radius yeah yeah because they're longer okay yeah you're not gonna wing around like you were i mean granted it's not terrible but it is how about power does it seem like it robs power from the machine speed speed and power the way they do these and gear them down with the sprockets it probably i don't know you probably over 10 miles an hour loss but you just feel it it roll you know it's quicker the first jump because it's geared down it's like taking off in the lower gear but that's why we lose do lose feet yeah i don't know how fast you'd ever want to push these tracks anyhow i mean they get pretty pretty vibrating already it's kind of not quite as bad as driving a caterpillar but i mean you get that okay all right jeff how do these tracks the cam so it's compared to the matte tracks are they very similar they're similar um you know the matte tracks you know uh the little you know the matte tracks are pretty tough equipment i mean they're big beefy you know they were in what i've seen they kind of designed them first for running on bigger equipment like trucks and suvs when they're up you know running the lakes up in uh northern minnesota so by that uh they're utv tracks i know we've had some on some of our uh vehicles that we used at the races is for our ops guys at the snow cross and though it's the one thing i have to say the mat tracks i never seen any problems with those and they those you know the workers at the track are running pretty hard yeah that's one thing i've never seen a problem with those on our utv so in my opinion yeah they are pretty tough i think you do pay for it i think the cost of the matchhacks is quite a bit more match-up do you think they're going to be double the price damages oh so you better really need tracks if you're gonna i'm not trying stuff i mean they're tough i mean what i've seen of them yeah you need up top you need them yeah good to know so just in case you missed that jeff was saying that he thinks that the matte tracks cost almost twice as much as the camso tracks but in just a moment you're probably gonna see why what are those little ones for probably for another hub another model yeah is my guess it's got to be the machine what cam so does have they have what they call fit kits so a lot of times what it'll do is we'll come with a new hub and wheel for it and you know usually they're 250 to 350 depending but they'll have any of the brackets so say you buy a arctic cat or a can-am they want to take these tracks and put it on you just got to buy a fit kit that will go on top of here that'll fit you know you can put it right on your other machine jeff are these freaking plastic i mean that's yeah i mean they're uh the harper well i mean you look at our snowmobiles i mean you got plastic narrow little plastic idler wheels on those and they're getting a lot of abuse too they hold up okay okay i'm gonna take your your word for it i mean i don't know anybody more experienced with this oh all right so you have a level guide on the back here look at this on the front on the front ones for adjustment once we let it down we'll go through how you gotta center this you adjust this rod right here okay lower the machine to the track instead of lift the track to the machine that would almost be like thinking so you got to get right in there to tighten up those lug nuts yeah they at least they come with longer lug nuts which is nice in years past you have to use you know stock lug nuts even too which these are so much nicer oh so they've got so those are the lug nuts so that's so you can reach all the way through yeah is do you have any idea how much this increases floatation jeff or is there really no clue i'm sure there is i there is everybody's seen tracks on a snowmobile it's like when you put a tire on a snowmobile everybody's gotta tune in i watched a video where a dude put two three atv tires on a snowmobile it was awesome [Music] so what i notice is the framework on these tracks is beefy well-built high-quality construction i'm not too comfortable with those plastic wheels though that boy in the minnesota freeze how well are those going to hold up especially if they take a hit while they're cold i don't know we've got to try to get the lug nuts on the tracks okay go ahead give her a little bump yep just a touch what did the back limiters do jeff keeps the track from flopping around okay so this is what keeps that from spinning around and and then kitty wompass on you okay then you want just uh what you do is turn this it's just to be snug you don't want this all collapsed and this one is done yep and then we just want to raise it up and double check our uh lug nuts once we get these on all of them we can raise it up so we can check our steering and then we can do it too okay okay i think we still got to tighten the lug nuts down though jeff i know one on the front is still loose for sure and i never checked the other ones i think we just got them on and that adjusts the that gets it back into level if you're out well yeah what we're doing is we're tipping the tracks all right guys we got a little bit of an issue we've got our stops pretty much maxed out right there can't really go much tighter but our little green level is not saying that we're level with the track so what we've got to do is we got to get that front of the track to pull up that way as we go forward we're not nose diving down and in so to clarify what i'm doing is i'm not actually leveling the track with the ground i'm adjusting the track so that it wants to pitch up and that's going to make turning and steering easier if i level the tracks look perfectly flat with the ground that'll give me better floatation but it'll also put more front track on the ground which will make the steering feel a lot more difficult we got her jacked all the way over now you measure how far off you are and then you pull this out yep how far were you on the other side you had a three quarters three quarters of an inch from center to center so you got the tires the tracks rotated all the way over pull the cable out three quarters of an inch pull the tracks back in put the bolt in tighten it up and now you got your steering limiters on both sides evened out is this the same method for trucks jeff pretty much yeah pretty much so the process of putting these on are basically the same as you do with the polaris ranger yeah yeah it's all the same you know if you run through the instruction here you got all your your your pivot points here now that everything's set you can tighten all this stuff up we'll spin it double check the lug nuts yeah that's a wrap okay so the tracks are on they're adjusted what about maintenance your user manual okay which basically we'll talk about track tension after you run it a little bit you know don't be afraid read this there's some do's and don'ts on what to do a lot of don'ts i'm seeing here but um [Laughter] so you know what uh us consumers will do to these machines things to look for and watch and if he has any problem there's some you know some troubleshooting and if you're uh french canadian or french you got it in french too so all right so we're all set so we're gonna take this out into the next uh to the to the testing grounds next so there you go thanks jeff appreciate it so also if you guys are around south st paul you gotta come check out motorsports plus uh these guys have i've worked with them for 15 years if not longer one time i left a four-wheeler here all year long i had to pay rent right it was probably too cheap it was all right let's take her out make her uh make her earn her keep next see he's got them right in high the front tracks easier to steer that way see what see what he's saying now about having it up high adjusting high makes it easier to steer [Music] how did it handle it's like a dream like a dream you'll find a little buzzier than retired plenty of room plenty of room pulled it off and pulled it right to there hey little one you can see all the damage it did to the yard into the driveway immediately hmm i don't think it's gonna be quite as turf friendly as my tires were at all right that's a good thing to note i could drive all over this yard with those tires and it wouldn't rip anything up all right let's watch the lawn behind us see what that looks like and that brings me to my first test let's see how bad this tears up the log and i'm not just gonna drive in a straight line i'm going to turn back and forth just to see how well it i did a turn right here and another turn really didn't too much up just see where those it's a deeper tread but does hmm look too bad does it it came right through here ah good [Music] for the next test i want to amp things up and i find a soft wet area of my swamp to do it in [Music] so oh boy oh boy oh boy all right this is opening up a whole new can of worms kids that was promising but that was not the worst spot right here i just parked a skid loader and it sank this is bad if it can go through here um that'll be the test [Applause] that is one of the most impressive upgrades that i think i've ever seen this machine basically just floats through muck it just floats i mean i wasn't gunning it i wasn't hoarsing it i wasn't doing anything but just gentle on the throttle that's incredible i mean my skid loaders got stuck of course it had tires that's a lot a lot more ground pressure so that's not comparable but look at the damage done yeah she tears but she's got them big aggressive treads so as you're turning and it's getting soft it's it's gonna be digging biting but where the ground is a little bit more firm and this ground isn't even firm you guys look at this i got a hole so that's what i'm calling firm ground that's just pure mush wow all right well that was cool but look at this holy crap no problem just hovered right through that bog that's incredible right but we got work to do so let's keep going front and center kids the next thing i want to do is hook up the snow plow and see if that the tracks alter the cutting height of the plow and how that affects the performance but before i do that i just want to go through the swaps so i've had about three weeks now to play around with these tracks and there's a big effect on performance both good and bad yes the machine does float but the turning radius is cut down dramatically in fact this is about as good as you get for the turning radius and the top speed this machine only topped out at about 37 miles per hour on a good day now we're lucky to get 20 miles per hour [Applause] if this next thing works i think i'm gonna call this video stick dozer [Applause] okay look at the ground clearance look at that that's crazy wow okay i didn't expect that i didn't change or modify the snowplow any way shape or form when i taken it off i'd taken it off with the tires on so the height was different for hooking it back up but the snowplow fits okay you're gonna call me crazy but i'm gonna try to push them sticks out of the way so that that the fresh undergrowth can pop back up so that i can get that cleared out so let's do go do that right now with the snowplow in the summertime oh yeah all right first test run of stick dozer begins so really the idea isn't to find myself the perfect blade to push around sticks i'm testing the snow plow to see what's the turning radius how much do those tracks disturb what's happening with the snow plow up front is it going to hover over the ground or is it going to get all the way down what i found is that i can't turn the plow all the way left or right without hitting the tracks so not only is my turning radius limited by the tracks themselves but also my ability to angle the blade is limited because of the tracks the blade won't extend all the way backwards that's not the end of the world what's what i am surprised is the fact that the blade does go down makes good contact with the ground and i think we'll still be able to be utilized as a snowplow this winter it actually cleared and it didn't even destroy the undergrowth the plow didn't destroy much it pretty much just pushed off the sticks i mean yeah we got some damage from the tracks turning back and forth a few spots but stick dozer don't really recommend running through sticks with tracks unless you want to tear your tracks up fast but that just tells me this winter it will still work for a snowplow but also one of the things i noticed right away is you can't fully angle the snow plow without the tracks biting into them so let's actually show you what we're talking about here we'll drop this down see that so you can't fully angle you can still angle see you're still angled but you're not going to get your full extension but the benefit is you're still going to be you don't have to do any adjustment with the snowplow for up and down height at least i didn't have to on this one you know before we put the stick dozer away for good let's just see if we can't clear some of this out it would be nice to get those big sticks just pushed out of the way [Music] well actually that is work surprisingly well although sticks really you shouldn't be around them it's the stumps that little sucker hooked me more than once all right you guys well we took her through the swamp we put the plow on tested that out we know that we can plow with it this winter but this isn't the real test of this machine um uncle tom and chris dropped a bunch of trees right in the swamp kind of in that same area where i almost got the asv buried so i don't know what they were thinking by what miracle they thought they were going to be able to get those trees out but i think this is going to be our answer so we're going to load this up hike it up north and that's going to be a video for another day because it's a full day's worth of work they just went to town that's easy when you get a chance on your zip zip zip zip now they leave the rest of it up to me so oh well that's family for you wouldn't trade it for anything hope you guys are just doing awesome sometimes you know what i kind of feel like you guys are my family as well and i i really appreciate you guys going along for the ride on these videos i love communicating with you guys down below and i really appreciate you guys hitting that thumbs up button so much and you guys just just i just can't say enough thank you that's it god bless you guys go get em and we'll see you on another one hopefully i won't be getting that buried in the swamp but it would be fun wouldn't it yes it was