Snowboard Holder for Snowmobile Rack is Rock Solid!
Here is a highlight of the snowboard holder
portion of the Snowmobile Rack. Snowboard holders are one of the
trickier aspects of a design to get right. The snowboards are pricey,
so the rack must not damage the board in any way. So how do you handle a
piece of cargo with 'kid gloves' if it's bucking around on a bronco
ready to be tossed off? We used redundancy with the strapping to get a
tighter fit and that does a couple of things. It means that if
something goes wrong, you'll have more of a chance for it not to ruin
your day. Also, it means that the board stays in the position you want
it to. You can center the board for long trail runs while you're
getting into the back country. Then, when it's time to rip you can
cantilever the board back and have the straps straddle the binding to
give you more space to jump around the sled while playing.
The rack is designed to fit both skis and snowboards. To protect your gear, the gentleness is added with a combination of UHMD, nylon, and webbing we both secure and protect the board from the beating the sled is taking.
The tests went fantastically. The road into the glaciers was about 10km of whoopies. The board jumped and bumped with the sled, but didn't move at all within the rack. After a full day of bumping along it didn't even need to be tightened down at all.
We proceeded up into the mountains for a day in the glaciers. The board came on and off the sled easily and is set well back from the rider for ease of riding. As mentioned in previous posts, there is a lot of flexibility for where you want the snowboard to sit based on our rack options. The photo above is of the board set fairly far forward. There are options to have it set much farther back and at a more level angle if that is preferred.
The final test was rolling the sled (for testing purposes only...) Once again the rack more than fit the bill. Every time the sled needed rolling the snowboard and rack just came along with it. No issues at all.