Just throwing out my 2 cents again in a different way, may be slightly off topic but still pertains to the discussion. In my experience there is no financial benefit to keeping most any snowmobile past 5k miles. The resale plummets and you start having to stick cash into it. It adds up quick, especially to upgrade/repair/maintain things the right way. Not to mention you always have that thought in the back of your head when something else is going to fail once you start to hit higher miles.
I’ve owned 19 snowmobiles, repaired everything from bottom end crank seals to full clutch rebuilds, have done at least a dozen top ends and probably have had over 40 tracks off of sleds between my personal ones, families, and friends sleds. We all know very well, that when a track comes off, it makes sense to replace the driveline bearings. Then we take a good look at the skid, and start throwing bogey bearings at it, then we send the shocks out for a rebuild. Before you know it, the $600 track turned into a $1200 project.
For example, a used 2-3 yr old Skidoo Renegade 850 with 4K or less miles goes for ~$10k depending on the model. Purchase price was likely $12-14k, model depending. The snowmobile has low enough miles, you haven’t likely stuck a dime into it. So in that amount of time, a max of $4k was lost and no cash stuck in the sled. You now have $10k from your sale to drop onto the next one, which will be the latest and greatest sled on the market. Now let’s say you kept that sled another 2-3 years and it now has 7-8k miles on it. You can barely give it away at $5-6k. You are now at $8k depreciation, not including the maintenance you’ve had to do to it, driving a machine that could fail at any given moment, and not enjoying the latest and greatest sled. You have likely bought three $250 belts at this point, replaced a $750 track, drive bearings, bogey bearings, a clutch rebuild, shock rebuild, you have now stuck $2000-2500 in parts into it and that’s if you can repair it all yourself and not pay $150/hr dealer labor. You have now lost at least $10k on it by the time you hope you can find someone to buy it, and don’t have a huge chunk of change to throw down on the next new sled.
This is my mindset when it comes to snowmobiles, and I carry a similar mindset with vehicles. This has allowed me to own a lot of nicer newer things on blue collar pay at a fairly young age.
I have seen so many sledders, go all out buying a new sled, ride it till the wheels fall off, and then get out of snowmobiling because they realized how upside down they are, and can’t afford another one, and are forced to get out of the sport because the $14k snowmobile they financed at 6% interest is now worth $3k with 8k miles after sticking a few grand into it to make it rideable again, and they have no money left to put down on the next new one to make it affordable…
I just had a mutual friend message me 2 weeks ago looking for advice on how to fix his sled. 17 XCR 800 with 9k miles. He had no clue drive bearings go out with high miles. After his bearings disintegrated into pieces and wrecked his entire chaincase and gears, jackshaft, and driveshaft, he now has a paperweight that he paid a lot of money for 5 years ago. He wasn’t aware Polaris used Lords adhesive to attach the chaincase to the chassis/tunnel, and couldn’t figure out how to remove the case. Likely will struggle to afford to repair it, let alone have any money left for a new one. Missed this entire riding season because of it, and wouldn’t be surprised if he ever buys another sled again.
