Arctic Cat “Power Claw” Track

One of the trick new features on the 2009 Arctic Cat M-Series mountain sleds is the latest in Cat’s deep snow track technology – the “Power Claw”. It has a 2.25 inch lug height with a center lug profile similar to the previous “Attack 20” pattern, but with “Finger Track” fingers on the outer belts. This track has a stiffness of 80 durometer.  The center-positioned “Attack 20” lugs are raked 20 degrees forward to get the sled to come up on the snow quickly without trenching.
The outer belt “fingers” are raked 20 degrees rearward to bite more positively into the snow. They are also staggered by one inch for better traction, and they’re angled so they push the snow toward the center of the track. This gives the track something to bite instead of allowing the snow to escape, which helps to provide better floatation. The lug pattern repeats every 6 pitches.
When these two features (Attack 20 interior lugs with Fingers on the exterior) are placed together on a track, it seems to give the track great deep powder as well as hard snow performance.  Our test riders were most impressed with this pattern during our multiple test sessions with Arctic Cat engineers in Idaho and Colorado. There might be a compromise here, but not very much. The sleds fitted with this track get up on the powder snow quickly, yet would bite very aggressively into hard snow conditions. We really think they have something here, but would still like to ride it in even broader conditions to really know for sure.
This new track also uses Camoplast’s “Single Ply” technology to make it lighter weight and easier to turn, but it is about the same weight as the Camoplast Challenger that was on the 2008 models. Since riding this new track, every time we get on a 2007 or 2008 M-Series machine we wish they all had this new track installed.