Team Arctic’s Alex Fortune checks in with an account of racing a Wildcat X in the final UTV BeaterCross event at ERX Motorsports in Elk River, Minn.
By Alex Fortune-
August 15, 2013, was the last round of BeaterCross at ERX motorpark.
I showed up ready to race with my Arctic Cat Wildcat X, high hopes and a new Elka suspension. The good times I’d had all year with the great folks at ERX motorpark added to the excitement.
I finished 3rd in both heat races and in the final. After missing a couple of rounds still put me in 4th place points in the UTV Open class.
Racing the Wildcat has taught me a lot about throttle control, as well as giving me confidence in my its ability. Truly the Wildcat X is incredible and will take anything you throw at it.
My setup at the last round was spot-on and I cannot wait to run it next year. Between the Speedwerx clutching, exhaust and mapped Power Commander V (plus the clutch blower) the machine was ultra responsive.
The Elka suspension was phenomenal. They valved it for my style and weight. Once installed, it only required minimal adjustment (a few clicks on low speed compression dampening to soften, then about 5 clicks firmer on high speed to stop bottoming; rebound adjusted so the front was slower than the rear). We also adjusted the ride height so the car was balanced in at 60-front/40-rear weight bias with me in it. I also lowered my ride height to 12.75″ to bring my center of gravity down which helped a lot.
Altogether these adjustments delivered a huge improvement to the nose-diving I’d experienced with the stock shocks. Plus the cornering was so much more stable, allowing me to push much harder than with the stock shocks. These two companies hands down have the hottest products on dirt for the wildcat and I cannot wait to see what’s next from them!
I’m looking forward to racing the Wildcat X in the woods at an Iowa harescramble event this October 5-6. Should be interesting!
Next year I plan returning to ERX, hopefully for all rounds of the BeaterCross series, plus some of the Iowa UTV harescamble and Short course events.
Truly, the success I enjoyed this season would not have been possible without my great sponsors: Storm Lake Honda and Arctic Cat, Speedwerx, Team Arctic, Twenty 7 promotions , Elka suspension, Twice production graphics, Upper Iowa Tool & Die, Ifly photography, Team Auto drive, Autismmx.org. Special thanks to all the guys that helped me at the track: Jeremy Houle, Jeff Zak and Jamey Harold.
