It's official. The Can-Am 800 has been dethroned.

[GEARSLAYER]

cc1999 reported this over at the HL forums about his new Thunderat:

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OK, I got a couple good hours of seat time on the Cat today. The motor was starting to loosen up after a few high speed passes. My buddy that has my old XT outy, was with me, so we did get to do some drag racing, The Cat was the victor in every race. Not my a huge margin, but the question has been answered to my satisfaction, the cat if faster, faster in fact than even a piped Outy.

The Outy was an XT with out bumpers, still has the winch on it. It was running 25" bighorns on cast Type 7 rims. So there was some power bias in the tire department. But I out way my Buddy by probably 80+ pounds, so I figure that balanced things out. We swapped machine a couple times and when I was on the Outy the Cat got me by much, much wider margins. The T-cat was showroom stock with maybe 2 miles on it when we started, later in the day after the Cat started to loosen up I was back on the cat and margin of victory was getting bigger.

The races pretty much went like this, The Outy can hold its own and in many cases get the whole shot, but by 35-40 mph the Cat would pretty much run it down and pass the outy every time. By 60 mph the cat was always multiple lengths ahead. Both machines wanted to stand up right off the line, it took a lot of practice to get back in the swing of launching these beast on grass without standing them up. The first race we both had them reaching for sky, and my buddy was thankful for the Outys well made grab bar. LOL

The Outy is geared lower and it shows, plus an inch or shorter wheelbase made the Outy much harder to launch than he cat, but when ever we hit the Outy just right, it would take the higher geared cat off the line for 100-200 foot or so before the cat could catch it.

We had a lot of fun racing today on grass, tomorrow we are taking them to the dunes for yet another round. I plan to take my std outy with the woods pipe and set it and the cat up with pretty much identical sand tires for as fair a comparison as possible.

All in all the stock T-cat did surprise me, I figured that with my big butt on the cat, that the piped outy would likely take me. At first if I got a bad start, the outy would take me for a ways but after that I was always able to catch it. If we both got good start the they ran even up to about 30-35 mph and then the cat would pull away.

So far I think the Outy to me still seems to be the better built machine, as far as quality and overall the Outy is a little more comfortable, but the cat does seem to be delivering on its promise of top dog power. The Cat is not bad in terms of comfort, but the outy is a very well rounded machine, and rides so smooth and its just hard to top some of the outy's other features. For many people the Cat will be the machine of choice, if power and ground clearance are key features to them, the Cat will be there dream machine. I however, like the cat, but I think my Outy is still going to be my favorite machine to ride.

Racing, thats a different story, give me the one with the most power, today the cat proved to me that it is the most powerful ATV money can buy off the showroom floor. After a few mods its just going to get that much stronger.[/b][/b]

I'll bet that we will see a lot more 800's for sale now.