Track Clips bad

JUst finnish prepping my sled. New bushings, exhaust, oil. The last thing last night was to change out my high fax's and noticed I was missing a clip from the track. Then I really started looking and noticed that I am missing quite a few. The ones I have look pretty worn. Is this normal for a track with 12,000 miles on it. The rest of the track is in great shape. Can I replace the clips myself. What do you recomend.

Thanks

Check your rail caps for play.

Generally once the clips start to go, they will all follow. This is a good sign that the track is near end of life. Yes 12K is good mileage on a track. Personally I would simply buy a new track. There are 2 main reasons why - first track technology has gone through constant improvement over the past 15 years and appears to be continuing that trend. Second, by the time you replace all of the clips on a track you are near half the price of a new track. If you reclip, you still have an old track.

However, you can add clips which run $2 - $3 a clip. You can do them yourself as long as you have the proper tool and a lot of patience. The easiest way is to remove the track. but there are tools that can replace clips while still on the sled. If you simply want to get some more miles out of the track, just replace the ones that are worn thru or missing altogether. That said one missing clip is really not going to hurt you. There are tracks that skip 2 out of 3 clips altogether such as the Camoplast Pace 3 models.

At about 10,000 miles I was missing 1/3 and another 1/3 were broken missing the guides. The track itself was in great shape. It was only clipped every 3rd window so it was a cheap repair compared to a new track. Buy Yamaha clips (if you want them to last) and borrow or buy a good track clip tool. It's not a hard job but if you've never done it talk to someone who has. I did all mine with the track real loose and the skid still in and it took less then 2 hours. Use a vice grip to "peel off" the clips.

APEX 06 said:

Check your rail caps for play.

Click to expand...

Are the loose rail caps only an issue on the Attack? Both of my rail caps have been loose on my Apex for several thousand miles now and I have had no missing track clips.

Loose rail caps have been an issue for years with most of Yamaha's sleds regardless of the model. I can't believe Yamaha can't fix this when we spend 10+ thousand dollars for a sled. Just drill out the rivents and use a bolt, lock nut and thread locker.

I agree that the loose rail caps are common. I had loose rail caps on my V-max's, SRX's, Viper, and my Apex. However after many tens of thousands of miles collectively I never lost a single track clip on any of those sleds.

I can not see how the rail cap will even contact the track clips on my Apex. Is the track clip issue only on the longer track sleds?

it would be on decell that the slack would be there and if the rail cap is loose enuff for the clips to hit the metal edge is the theory i belive it is the weight of the sled causing heat thru friction and any sand you may pick up along the way that eventualy wears out the clips we all had to replace clips on our apexes at around 6000 miles and the the other half of them wore out at around 7000 miles this i think is also cause the stock track is only clipped every third window and multiplys all the weight times 3 and causes them to wear faster then other tracks would. as for price the clips are not that bad and with the right tool go on fast.

Since I just installed a fully clipped Ice Ripper XT track I decided to fix my loose rail caps just to be safe. They have been loose for most all of the 7200 miles on the sled and never caused any track clip damage on the original track.

When I removed them I could see that they wore down the aluminum rail where they had been rubbing back and forth over the years. I drilled out the holes and re-installed them with 1/4 inch stainless screws and nylock nuts after filling the rail caps with epoxy.