I agree Budro2 with the 18’s, thats what I’m running in my 686cc Viking and have been very pleased. The 708 and 686 power-bands are so much alike. I had the 708 in my 2017 Kodiak and liked the 18’s with 1.5mm of shims. I did not care for the shims in my Viking 686 so I took them back out. Have you experimented with the shims? Do you like any shims behind the primary?
Yes, I played with shims a lot on my Gen 1.
It had a HW sheave with a .5 shim in. I put 28” tires on afterwards and in deep snow the belt ended up hitting the cover. They didn’t have much room in there. Instead of taking the shim out, I modified the cover to have all the room I needed.
Others had tried 1mm of shim in conjunction with the HW sheave but the belt always hit the cover under load.
I tried 2mm of shim knowing there’s no way I’d hit the cover. I disintegrated a belt in 10 miles.
It was simply going to low in the primary and losing to much grip so it was slipping and creating heat.
I tried 1.5 mm and did a couple hundred miles. That was an awesome combo. I loved driving it like that. In heavy snow I blew another belt. The heavy load in snow on the big tires pulled the belt to low in the primary and again it slipped and got hot.
1mm of shim worked trouble free for 1000s of miles till I sold it.
Noload runs .75 mm in his without a modified cover and 27” tires.
One thing I learned in all that was that what I read on the Grizzly forum that guys got away with on a four wheeler didn’t apply to a heavier side by side that had the exact same CVT.
The weight oh the machine is a big factor. So is tire size and conditions it’s driven in.
That CVT is close to maxed out in a wolverine or Viking before we start tinkering.
One can get away with a lot when it’s in a light weight four wheeler.
I’m running a 1mm shim in my Rmax right now. It crawls better with 32” tires than it did stock with 30s.
