Rennie Scaysbrook | March 10, 2016
In most place, you can’t go riding when it snows. But if you have a Timbersled-fitted bike, you can’t not go riding when it snows.
I love the snow. There’s something about being in touch with nature, carving through deep white powder on a board that does good things for the soul. But there’s something I like far more than snowboarding—riding dirt bikes! And what better way to soothe the soul than to ride a 450cc motorcycle designed for Glen Helen way up into areas you’d normally need to either hike for days or be helicopter-dropped in to be able to see?
You can read the original magazine story by clicking HERE.
Photography by Todd Williams
Idaho-based Timbersled has been making conversion kits for bikes for a while now, but their recent acquisition by powersport mega-player Polaris has given the company the resources to develop new product lines, as well as vastly expand their international customer reach. The company produces four separate kits—the Short Track Raw, standard Short Track, Long Track and Snow Cross 120”—there’s a conversion kit for pretty much every motocross and enduro bike on the market dating back more than 10 years, giving riders across the globe the ability to ride their bikes all year round.
It’s a booming sector of the motorcycle market that’s gone largely unnoticed and after riding a Husqvarna FC450 equipped with a Short Track kit, I can promise you, once you give this style of riding a go, you’ll never look at dirt bikes the same again.
Founded in 2002, Timbersled, which is now owned by Polaris, makes conversion kits for many brands and styles of dirt bikes.
Creating a Timbersled
As you can see, a Timbersled still retains the majority of the standard dirt bike. You still use the standard fork, fuel tank, main chassis, engine and plastics, but the rear of the bike (swingarm, rear shock and links, chain, etc) must be removed to fit the parts making up the Timbersled track.
Timbersled has developed its own Fox Zero coil-over pneumatic rear shock and Timbersled Suspension Strut (TSS), which gives you 20 inches of suspension travel and helps the bike retain more of a dirt-bike feel when cornering. Combining that with the 12.5-inch-deep convex track, this allows the bike to find an incredible level of traction in powder up to three to four feet deep. The convex-shaped paddles, much like the paddles on a sand tire, act like massive shovels on acceleration, scooping the snow out of the way and finding traction in areas that would have a normal dirt bike sinking to its death.
Can you say-traction?
The Long Arm Convex Pivoting Suspension on the track was developed with super steep slopes and uneven terrain in mind and essentially flexes to the conditions you ride in. A bit like an army tank’s track, the Timbersled rear suspension will help the track glide over all kid of obstacles, ensuring there’s enough paddles on the ground for your next burst of acceleration. You’ll also get a small rear track brake set-up that sits about six inches back from where the standard rear shock used to sit.
The front ski is a relatively easy conversion.
Wow! Twenty inches of rear wheel…err, track travel. A Timbersled conversion will be about a $6,500 investment, but well worth it.
The TSS system requires the removal or at least modification of the stock airbox to make way for the extra travel you’re now getting, requiring you to run the newly developed Timbersled Deep Snow Intake System that butts up to the throttle body. Bikes with batteries inside the airbox require a bit more fiddling about to create the space necessary to fit the TSS.
Up front you retain the fork but remove the front wheel and brake set-up to fit the ski.
Our test bike was fitted with aftermarket lights and handguards.
So… What’s It Like?!
In a word—awesome! I’ll admit I get to do some cool things in this job, but riding a Timbersled Husqvarna FC450 is hands down one of the best things I’ve ever done on a motorcycle for two reasons: One—the sheer novelty of riding a motorcycle in deep powder and, two—for the places you can go.
It takes a bit of fine-tuning in the riding style to understand the language of the Timbersled. Initially it feels like the bike doesn’t want to turn, because if you’re used to the speed at which a dirt bike turns, a Timbersled will feel like a truck in comparison. You have to look where you want to go, point the ski in that direction and trust it—which is actually harder than it sounds—but the more time you spend on it, the more it feels like a dirt bike, albeit one with a gigantic wheelbase.
That wheelbase is what makes the turning initially slow but ultimately ultra stable. Pick your line, hold on and pin it. That’s how to get the most out of one of these in wide-open fields.
It’s best to find your own line on a Timbersled rather than follow someone else’s. Riding through uncharted powder allows the ski to track its own line, if you follow your buddy’s, the ski can sometimes go off course and once it does, much like if you cross-rut a motocross track, you’ll hit the ground. But crashing in powder is much nicer than crashing at Glen Helen, even funny, almost!
In the tight stuff, what was amazing was how the back-end would flex and bend according to the terrain I was riding. At one point I rode across a 60-degree hill, and the back end simply flexed to the angle of the ground and gave me all the traction I could ever need. Follow that with the explosive nature of the 450cc motocross engine, and you’ll very rarely get stuck. And here’s a trick: don’t rely on the torque to pull you out. You need to keep the paddles spinning up hard high in the rev range. Clicking a gear higher and being lower in the torque will have you going nowhere as the deep snow will overpower the engine.
Snow and dirt bikes: now that sounds like fun- and it is!
Where we rode, the places we saw, would be utterly impossible to get to if we didn’t have one of these Timbersleds. Snowmobiles are excellent machines, but they’re big and heavy, so getting them into some of the backcountry areas we rode would take a seriously talented rider on board. There’s pretty much no area that’s out of bounds on one of these things, and if you ride the Timbersled in deep powder, the damage to the environment is minimal, so that’s a win for everyone.
I can hand-on-heart say this was one of the best motorcycling experiences of my life.
You can read the original magazine story by clicking HERE.
For more Cycle News Off-Road motorcycle reviews, click HERE.
For more Husqvarna motorcycle reviews, click HERE.
