Yamaha SRViper L-TX SE : Pre-ride Analysis

For the tenth consecutive season, Yamaha Canada renew their partnership with the web magazine SledMagazine.com in regards of the on-line trials. This season, Yamaha Canada offers a 2014 SRViper L-TX SE snowmobile, one of the 5 new models in the 2014 SRViper lineup.

These models come from the supplying agreement between Arctic Cat and Yamaha. Arctic Cat brings the chassis and suspension while Yamaha brings the 3-cylinders engine of 1049 cc found on the FX Nytro models. Each manufacturer offers many models issued from this agreement. Arctic Cat models are known as the 7000 Series and Yamaha models are named SRViper. It is interesting to know that all 2014 Viper models have been assembled at the Arctic Cat plant under Yamaha’s engineers supervision.

A priori, we could expect snowmobiles with identical performances, but reality should prove otherwise. In fact, each manufacturer will use his own clutch, his own injectors and his own ignition system. When we tried both companies’ prototypes last spring, we could already feel the difference in their respective performance. We are anxious to see how the SRViper L-TX SE will perform on trails during the next season under the conditions we know in this north-eastern part of America.

The last time we visited the Yamaha dealer P. Labonté & Fils in Mont-Joli, our partner for this test, we could see that there had been many modifications and improvements between the spring prototypes and the series models actually offered. It concerns the looks of the machine as well as the mechanical parts. We will come back on this subject in a future article…