Honest opinions - 900T vs Thundercat

It's really about what you want.

Some guys prefer the "glued to the trail" feeling. The 998 is just that. Glued to the trail. It feels pretty good at what it does. I associate glued to the trail with feeling heavy. So to me, the 998t feels much heavier than the 900t, even though the weight isn't that big of a difference.

The 900t is a more well rounded snowmobile. I'm more of a 2 stroke guy, so the 900t is a better fit for me. It feels more nimble and easier to throw around. I think the guys who say the 998 can't keep up in the trails With the 900t are being a little too critical. The 998t is a tough package to beat and would really only start showing its weaknesses off trail or in very tight and twisting trails.

At the same time, the 900t would need some adjustments to make it as glued to the trail as the 998. But if you make those adjustments, as a trail sled, I think the 900t is hands down the better snowmobile.

I did an evaluation last spring before ordering my 900T XRS and can say the new pricing is not really the reason to go with the Cat. The 2020 TC was $13,500 with a 1 year warranty and a 1" track. By the time I added a comparable track and a warranty the price for the Cat was higher than the XRS. But my Doo dealer gives me a pretty good discount - but most dealers around me offer pretty close to the same spring order deals on Doo's. The Cat dealer I worked with would not discount and said spring order deals prices were it. I have heard some Cat dealers throwing in free warranties. The one I spoke to did not. Beyond these basics you can easily get into a back and forth over nitpicking which features are more or less valuable but for me that was what it boiled down to from a pure pricing perspective. You may have completely different priorities than I do in which case the value prop may be also be different.

What really made the difference for me was that there was nowhere for me to test ride a TC or even look at the new 2020 TC in person. On the flip side my Doo dealer let me take out a 19' XRS 900T demo sled and I put nearly 30 miles on it. Doo also has spring test ride events and shows locally so you can actually see the new sleds before ordering one. My dealer also sells Yamaha so he let me take a spin (not a full 30 mile test run) on a used Sidewinder that someone had recently traded in on a Doo 850. For me the 900T XRS was the clear winner in all around trail manners. It felt more nimble and lighter in the tight stuff. For me I wanted the sled that handled best between 30 - 80 MPH not the sled that could accelerate best beyond the 100 MPH mark. In stock form I thought the Doo was the clear winner in the turns, the SW definitely had more punch on the top end. Both sleds can be tuned to make more top end speed and if that is your thing I think a TC/SW is going to be the clear winner in that department. I priced a 2020 Sidewinder from my Doo dealer just because and the price was so far out to lunch compared to the Thundercat that it was not even a consideration at that point.

Good luck with your search. While it sounds like I am bagging on the Thundercat and Sidewinder I am not. The 900T XRS likely does not exist if these sleds were not on the market. I thank Cat and Yamaha for that and there really is no better time to be on a 4S performance sled. Hopefully they just keep getting better and better.

Edit: Just did a quick check of the Cat website and it looks like they did a couple of smart things. They now have a 1.25" track as standard and they got rid of the crap brown spindles. The bad thing is the price is now up to $14,195 and still only a 1 year warranty.