So…what’s the big announcement?
Maybe Kirk Hibbert, Brad Pake and Brian Sturgeon returning to competitive racing?
In front of 1,000 or so people, Jerry Bernardo will make a hugely-unintended, off-color remark to Lissa Toncray?
Snow Goer magazine will retract their Noontime, from-the-fire-truck announcement that the Ski-Doo MX Z TNT ACE is their 2011 sled-of-the-year, and will instead give the award to the F8 Sno Pro LE?
Arctic Cat is purchasing the intellectual property of Redline snowmobiles, and will bring to market the first snowmobile that doesn’t use a rear snowflap?
A public humiliation of the roughly 12,587 people who accidentally went to the old site location in Columbus Township?
Hmm… excellent possibilities.
But here’s what I know for sure: There will be a celebrity wedding taking place in the Arctic Cat Display booth at 1pm. No dress code will be enforced. Not sure if there’s an open bar.
From 1-3 pm many Team Arctic Snowmobile racers will weild a Sharpie during the autograph signing. This will be THE place to get the newest Team Arctic poster signed by Tucker Hibbert, Dan Ebert, Brian Dick and many others.
In addition to the race dudes, the following race sleds will be on display: Tucker Hibbert’s ISOC-dominating SnoPro; Dan Ebert’s I-500 winner; the Soo I-500-winning SnoPro from Cadarette racing; Brian Dick’s USCC Pro 600 champ; and several others. I doubt the F5 that I rolled twice on day-one of the 2008 I-500 will be there, but you never know for sure.
NASCAR fans rejoice! The #1 Bass Pro/Arctic Cat race car driven by Jamie McMurray will be on full display. The car will be fired up every hour!
And as always, Arctic Cat will serve up free Neon Green popsicles. I’m also hoping for buffalo jerky.
The Redline snowmobiles have been coming up a lot this week to me! I have a guy coming Friday morning to buy one of our 2006 Snocross race sleds. He told me that he was involved with the Redline snowmobiles, and making high tech speed sleds. He said they put about $30,000 into a F-5 Arctic Cat that crashed and burned and want my chassis to build another one. He said it involves a Yamaha engine being put into my 440 snocross sled chassis. There is an engineer from Chrysler in Detroit who is a turbo expert, and some guys from D&D in New York involved with the project.
I guess as long as he comes with money, I don’t care what he does with it! By the way, he doesn’t want the 440 liquid cooled engine in my sled, but he didn’t say what he’d sell it for. If anyone is interested, let me know and I can contact him! …John Zanon – Norway, Mich.
I am just PRAYING cat finally released a bigger cc/ more hp in the sno pro chassis. If not unfortunately we have no choice but to switch to skiDoo.. If cat don’t want are buisness. Brp does… Cat needs to wake the hell up! Hopefully something good is about to be introduced
John, the guy coming to get your sled has put yammie and thundercat motors in firecats and goes by trimerbarber on HCS…
I predict cat will release a di for hay days…. they need a limited amount of these on the snow this season before they go full production..
the big surprise will be what they release it as
Flintstone, your right…he did say something about trimerbarber on hard core sledder. Also said they have video on youtube of past projects.
I always thought Cat, Polaris, and Ski-Doo would follow Yamaha in the 4-stroke snocross racing, I thought 4 strokes would be the future. When the Yamaha’s come to race, the engine sound turns heads and creates excitement, although they seldom finish up front. I’d like to see Arctic Cat come out with a 4-stroke race sled! …John
Perhaps the big announcement is the return of John Sandberg to competitive racing! I’m thinking maybe a little three day ride Jan. 21-23. The Goodridge area is lovely that time of year. To bad you don’t know anyone from up that way to show you around!
I predict zero introductions of new product at Haydays. Why would they? The 2011s just came out. 2012 is the 50th anniversary.
John Z. and Flintstone: Patriotic Innovations on HCS (AKA: “Turbo Phil” by many) would literally have nothing to do with anything AC related, he’s a dyed in the wool Polaris man, yes, he has in the past stuffed multi-cylindered engines in a couple of Firecat chassis for his buddy Larry (Trimmerbarber), but as far as going any deeper into AC developement of any kind, I highly doubt that would happen
People really need to get off the subject of the bigger motor in the snopro. Im not trying make people mad, but with all the requests that Cat has had and they havent put a bigger motor in yet they probably arent going to. If you want the bigger motor become a racer, buy the d&d or speedwerx kit, drop another motor in of your choice, buy an old race sled, or switch companies. So hopefully people wake the hell up and realize its probably not going to happen.
What are the chances that Cat says that Chris Burandt is coming back to Arctic Cat probably not to high but that would be neat. Maybe they will say that they teamed up with someone to help build “SOME” of their engines (referring to the “what does some mean” article). I guess we will just have to wait and see. Ill be there to find out first hand to find out so hopefully they give out some free gear or something ha.
Go to Ski-Doo, Mark G. If all you do is “point and squirt” your sled (drive it in a straight line and hold it full throttle) across a smooth flat lake or field, maybe BRP is for you. But if you bang ditches, hit the twisties and skim washboard trails….take that SnoPro 500 all day long. I guarantee you won’t be able to go any faster on anybody’s 800 through that stuff.
John z.. here is one of trimmer’s firecats… your sled will never be the same after this dude is done with it~!~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPdiIEbuKWM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPdiIEbuKWM
hmm. the link doesn’t worky.. if you go to youtube and search trimmer turbo, you will see trimerbarber’s turbo yamaha firecat with twin aero chargers with the boost cranked!!! I think tirmer uses phil and d and d to help build these… he crashed one of them one day and got messed up bad!!
Hey you guys don’t think maybe tucker will be on a fuel injected race sled this season? that would be different…
doesn’t cat usually release the new race sleds at haydays?
From a guy owning everything from race sleds to custom 250hp trail sleds, The snopro 500 is undoubtly perfect for what it is intended for.
TomBodet: I concur 100%!!
Reading the “invite” leads me to wonder what is meant of “union of two icons”. Is it anything more than the wedding that John refers to?
Is this the relationship with AC and Mercury that has been rumored for the Optimax tech?
I dont think it is going to be anything too earth shattering otherwise I would be going. 🙂
The announcement will be the unveiling of the new 2012 chassis to be used on the race circuits this season, and then available to consumers in 2012……..We’ll know shortly if that’s what it is, but it sounds good to me.
Well???? It’s 1:45 does anyone know what the announcement was?
2:25 pm est……What’s the announcement?……..Thanks
Sounds like the big announcement was that Tucker Hibert is racing the full ISOC circuit this year
Robotman is correct. Many of us wanted to see a new sled, but as Joe C. mentions above, this ain’t the 50th year. And I suspect that Cat will race prototype versions of next race sled prior to production. Hasn’t happened yet, but I’m going to pay VERY close attention to the Open sleds this season in snocross and cross-country.