I have a friend in the village who has been through 3 of these wide tracks before during and after the late 90's. 550 2 stroke and very simple to work on. 1 piece cowling and not full of all the stuff in the 4 strokes out now. He has had good luck with them. Like me he tried a 4 stroke recently and had a starter go out and had to pull the engine and everything out just to fix it and when it went again he gave it back and bought another Polaris 550 wide track. Only reason I bought my 540 VK instead of the Polaris was it had only 1 carb and less congestion under the hood but the Polaris is plenty easy to work on also. That's my take.

Carry a shovel! All the guys back in the 90's who used them carried a shovel. Big scoop shovel!

I have liked the vk professionals. Lots of power. Used my uncles rig. I have a 600 ace and have used it for trapping. Love the milage that it got out of it. 600s would be good for power. 800s even better. A longer track would be ideal.

I put 40,000 miles on a Polaris Widetrak. The engine was bulletproof. The drive bearing is a real beast to replace. I had to cut some holes in the tub to do it. Transmission was good as long as you didn’t shift from reverse to low a bunch of times getting stuck, they won’t hold up to that. Side hills were tough, it wanted to go downhill. Very little lugs on the track made it spin a bunch going up steep trails. It was great on the river and could pull a good load, but in the mountains and narrow trails, not so much.