Ok Since my years here at SW I have been a HUGE arctic cat supporter. I have always recommended purchasing a cat and pretty much bleed AC green.

So now comes the bad part :cussing:

I have held off my rant on this pending AC's response and now that I am confident they could care less about keeping a 20 year Customer Here I go.

My 05 T660 Threw a valve December of last year on opening snowmobile weekend. The dragged it home and left it sit. a New motor is $4500 and is in no way worth replacing. I got home after the trip to find a letter from AC stating that the valve height needed to be checked and it would cause catastrophic failure if not tended to. The letter also stated that this was stated in the Owners Manual. Guess what its not in the owners manual. a month later i get another letter from AC stating that they apologized and it was not in the owners manual but to have it checked anyway. By this time the dealer has come back and said the motor is done courtesy of a bad valve from said issue.

Now I call AC and speak to a few higher ups. I finally get a nice guy who is in charge of warranty and recalls Brian Espeseth, to tell me that they are going to help me out and get me the parts but I would have to do the rest. Ok im thankful. I take the sled BACK to the dealer and awt the Parts. In march I get a call from the dealer stating cat will give me a new block for $2500:bored:. Well the machine is not worth me putting $2500 plus labor into so why would I do that.

I get cat back on the phone and said that was not the offer and they are negating the initial offer and I wanted to know why. They stated they never said that. NOt the guy I spoke with but some secretary was sent o do his dirty work. Now im pissed. I write 15 letters to every important person at AC... including suzuki execs stating that I have bought sled after sled from them and this is not the right thing to do after they already offered me the parts new or used I didnt care. Just needed the block and I was happy. At this point my $11k sled is worth crap.

I got an official response from them months later basically telling me they never made that offer and to "pound Salt"

I wasnt execting something for nothing but when they offered I made all the arrangment to get the sled ready for them to tear down... so it cost me money for them to prep it for the engine they never came through on.

I am not saying that I will never buy AC again but 4 strokes are supposed to be the wave of the future and I should not had one blow after 3500 miles. I did all there dealer service and took great care of the machine. I was hoping to keep it for a long time. Now I am reduced to parting it out.

My next new sled will most likely be a polaris... As for this year I will be cruising on my Panther 550 Spare because $10k on a new sled is not in my budget.

Just thought some of you would like to know about my dealings with them.

I had a similar dealing with them when my clutch basically fell apart at 1400 miles on an 2000 ZL600efi. I went and bought 2 Yamaha 4-strokes which in my opinion are the best 4-stroke out there.

If "going green" were being driven by the market rather than by legislative mandate I suspect you'd find deeper pockets to which to call. Unfortunately, I think the cleaner technology is costing the companies dearly and the are probably stretched both to warrant as well as to properly test their products before they hit the snow, water, or road. Such has also been the case with Polaris and their 550 fan I believe. I know outboards have also had some of these issues. (Consider the failure of OMC as they were switching over.)

I won't tell you you're going to have to suck it up; I don't think we should. But you will discover who your friends are. (My old OMC dealer is my outboard dealer for life after they covered the warranty when BRP refused to after their take-over.)

In my case it made me a bit more gun-shy of the new technologies for now. I simply fell back on the already proven new/old carbed four stroke Honda system as my choice for an outboard. (That's been seven years of no regret!) I almost think that Yamaha - who "bet the farm" on four stroke, and who seem to have it figured out- may be the best choice in reliable new sno-mo technology at this point. I am not convinced yet, that we can rely on LC machines for our very hard snow conditions so I'm not ready to pull the pin. However, as my old rigs all begin to accumulate over 10,000 miles, I'm sure I'll have to be looking in the next year or two.

Thats to bad.... sled thats well takin care of. omitted service ref. in manuel, ya 4 strokes SHOULD outlast 2-strokes,, but i will NEVER buy one.... 20 year cust. wow! my first cat was 1981 el tigre' 6000 so yes ive talked up the brand quite a bit over the years also... but not much anymore.... they are all to exspensive!!!