I had the opportunity to drive a Polaris Ranger equipped with Mattracks up and down a remote site access road a few times on Friday. The conditions ranged from bare gravel at the bottom to approximatly 12" of snow at the top with areas of compacted snow/ice in the middle over about 2 1/2 miles. All of my driving was with 4X4 engaged. This was my first chance to try this type drive system, but I have driven many different ORV's over the years. This is my opinion after about an hours driveing time.
Out on fresh snow, the machine made it's own way pretty easy. Traction and braking with the mattco tracks was excellent under all the varying conditions. If you had enough momentum, particularly going downhill, you could probally do a "stoppie" with it, in part due to the raised ride height/CG. The track drive wheel is smaller than the stock tire/rim so there is a reduction in tread speed for a given engine/transmission RPM and an overall reduction in top speed, not that you would ever want to go fast in one of these things anyway. This reduction in gearing made brake usage almost unnecessary even on the steepest downhills.
Unfortunatly, that is about where my good thoughts ended. In my opinion, the negatives were most likley due to the tread choice on the tracks. The tread lugs on the track were purely perpendicular to the tread belt movement, placed in a stagard formation. This does not provide for very much side traction. The snow on the road was a little rutted from other vehicles and the difference between the tread width on the machine and the rut width lead to the machine flopping from side to side a bit(as would most any vehicle). On the smooth icy parts of the road, if any road tilt was evident, and there wasn't much on this gravel logging road, the vehicle would tend to walk(slide) sideways down the grade untill enough snow/loose material could build up alongside the tread to halt the movement. This lack of side traction probably contributed to the poor side to side performance in the existing ruts. Unfortunatly, this lack of sideways traction is most evident when you try to turn. This thing had the turning radius of a stretch limo! The ammount you can even turn the steering wheel is limited by the triangular tread assemblies. When you do turn the wheel, the supperior traction of the rear end(thrusting straight ahead) easilly overcomes the lack of side traction of the turned front treads and the machine wants to push straight ahead(understeer) with the front tracks providing a lot less than normal sideways movement. A round turnaround where I could easilly have turned around a wheeled UT or a quad, required me to back and fill not once, but twice. I tried this several times with different combinations of speed and power to see if there was an operator tequnique that would overcome this deficiency, but it was the same(poor) no matter how I tried it. The tracks slide sideways at least as far as they were thrusted forward by the front drive train. A tire in this same situation will act like a rudder, but these did not, probably due to the fact that they cannot turn as far to left or right. Front wheel drive only in this situation might have been a benefit in turning, allowing the front treads to dig in and drag the front around in a tighter circle. It goes great in a straight line, but I would not want to try and snake one of these thru the trees or similar obstacles. The steering was also very heavy under all conditions. Power steering would be nice with these tracks. I think the performance would have been better with different lugs on the tracks, either side lugs parallel to the belt movement or a single center lug running the length of the belt or an AG pattern all of which would probably improve sideways traction. This however might cause other unwanted side effects, such as throwing front tracks due to excessive side loads in turns.
Sorry random thought.
