Decoding a Pre-Alterra Arctic Cat

What the name on the machine is made of

Arctic Cat sold quads as a displacement plus a trim for about two decades before the Alterra name arrived, and the application catalogue still records them that way, because Camso does. Camso’s published application guide is a table with the make in one column, the displacement in the next, and the model in the third, so a row reads as three separate fields rather than as a model name.1 Its column headings, read on 2026-09-26, run:

MAKE · CC · MODEL · SUSP TYPE · YEAR From · Up to YEAR · TYPE · AVAILABILITY (ETA) · REMARKS · FRONT Sprocket · REAR SprocketCamso Powersports ATV/UTV Track Systems Application Guide, August 2026 revision, powersports.camso.co, read 2026-09-26

The catalogue joins the second and third of those columns and appends the model-year span. So a row title is not a name anybody printed on a fender. It is CC + MODEL + years, assembled. Once you can see that, the titles stop looking arbitrary: the leading number is displacement and everything after it is what Camso put in the model field.

Some rows have nothing in the model field at all. Those come through as a bare displacement and a year span — in the catalogue, 400 (2014-2015), 450 (2014-2015) and 500 (2014-2017), all published by T4S and X4S. A bare row is not a base model or a catch-all — it is a row where the manufacturer left the model field empty, and which trims it covers is not stated anywhere. If your machine falls in one of those year spans, match on the displacement and the year and get the trim confirmed by the fitment desk.

The displacement key

Every displacement that appears in a row title for this make, with the model years it spans and how many distinct titles carry it. Displacements that only ever appear under the Alterra name are marked in the last column, so a number you cannot find in the pre-Alterra years is not necessarily missing.

The displacement in a row title is the number in the model name, not a measured engine capacity, and on this make the two have never tracked each other closely. Do not reason from one row’s number to another row’s engine, and do not assume two machines with the same number take the same kit — the rear suspension further down is what usually separates them.

The two word orders

This is why a search for the name on the machine returns half of what exists: the two track manufacturers write the same machine in opposite orders.2

Read the systems column. The family-name-first convention is entirelyone manufacturer’s, and the displacement-first convention is almost entirelythe other’s. The practical instruction: search the family name on its own, without a number, and search the number on its own. Searching them joined in one order finds one manufacturer’s rows.

The exceptions, so a search on them does not come back empty — displacement-first titles published by the system that otherwise leads with the family name: 550 4x4 TRV Automatic (2009), 550 4x4 TRV LE H1 EFI Automatic (2009), 700 4x4 TRV Cruiser EFI Automatic (2008) and 700i TRV Cruiser PS (2012).

Spellings that differ between the two catalogues

Word order is not the only divergence. The same trim is spelled differently depending on which manufacturer published the row, and the difference is not a typographical detail — it decides whether a search matches.

On the last two rows: one manufacturer writes the injection letter as its own word after the displacement and the other joins it to the number. Camso’s guide additionally prints it in parentheses on some rows, which the catalogue renders as a separate word. Camso does not publish what the parenthesis means, so treat it as an unexplained notation and one more string that will not match across the two catalogues. Search the number with the letter attached, then detached, before concluding your machine is not listed.

The trim words, and the one that is not there

Every trim word printed on these machines, with what the catalogue returns for it. Words that return nothing are left in the table, so you can see a search will fail before you run it.

Not present in any row title for this make: VP. That is about the catalogue’s titles on 2026-09-26: it does not mean no such trim was sold, and it does not mean no system fits one. It means searching that word returns nothing, and the displacement and model year are what you have to work with instead.

Some words only ever appear in one manufacturer’s row titles. Kimpex only: PS, FIS and MRP. Camso only: Limited, Plus, ACT and Manual shift. Read that carefully. It means one manufacturer puts that word in its row titles and the other does not. It is not a statement that the other manufacturer publishes no application for those machines — the same machine is frequently there under a title built from different words, which is what the two tables above are for.

Where the two naming eras overlap

The Alterra name did not replace the old convention cleanly in the catalogue. For model years 2016 and 2017 both conventions are live at once: Alterra-titled rows span 2016–2024 and rows with no Alterra in the title span 1996–2017.3

For a machine in the overlap that means checking twice. A row for it may exist under the old displacement-and-trim title, under an Alterra title, or under both — and if under both, the two rows are not necessarily identical, because the two manufacturers group trims differently. A row missing from one convention is missing from that convention.

The overlap also has nothing to do with the badge question. A machine built in the two years Arctic Cat’s quads wore the Textron name is filed under a different make heading entirely, and that is a separate entry.

The field the older rows turn on

Displacement is the variable buyers reach for and it is almost never the one that settles which kit fits. On this make the field that separates two otherwise identical titles is the rear suspension, and Camso publishes it as a column with its own legend:4

Ind* A-Arm Independant · Rig* Rigid axle / Trailing armCamso Powersports ATV/UTV Track Systems Application Guide, August 2026 revision, powersports.camso.co, read 2026-09-26

The rigid-axle rows are 20 records over model years 1996–2006, published by T4S and X4S. The independent rows are 134 records over 1999–2022. The rigid ones are the older end of the catalogue, and their titles are exactly the pre-Alterra shapes: 375 Automatic ACT (2002), 400 Automatic ACT (2003-2006), 400 Manual shift (1998-2001), 400 Manual shift ACT (2002-2006), 454 Manual shift (1996-1998), 500 Automatic (2002), 500 Automatic ACT (2000-2001), 500 Manual shift (1998-2000), 500 Manual shift (2001) and 500 Manual shift (2002).

196 records carry no rear-suspension value at all, and they are all published by WS4. That is an absence of published data, not a statement that suspension type is irrelevant to those kits. If you are working from a row with no value in that column, the value has to come from the machine.

A flag on the oldest rows that Camso does not define

Camso flags individual applications with a single letter and glosses the letters in a legend at the head of each page of its guide. The gloss is short, and it is the whole of what is published: no page in the guide says what the condition requires on a particular machine.

One flag on this make is not in the legend at all. Read on 2026-09-26, the legend in Camso’s guide defines the letters A, B, C, E, F, G, H, J and K. The letter printed against several of this make’s oldest rigid-axle rows is D, and D is not in that legend. The condition string the catalogue carries for those rows is not in the legend either.

So Camso flags those applications and publishes nothing saying what the flag requires. It could be anything from a spacer to bodywork coming off, and the adjacent letters are no guide to it. If your machine is one of the rigid-axle rows in the table above, that unexplained letter is the thing to put to the fitment desk by name before you order — along with what has to come off the machine and whether it goes back on.

Kimpex publishes no per-application condition data at all: every Commander WS4 record in this catalogue has an empty remarks field. The absence of a WS4 entry below means nobody has published a condition for it — not that none exists. Camso is the only manufacturer here that publishes these flags, so this page is necessarily a Camso view of the catalogue.

That note matters more on this make than on most. The volume system publishes the largest share of these rows and publishes no condition data on any of them, so an owner who finds no flag against their machine has found no published flag — which is a different thing from a machine that needs no modification.

The oldest published rows

The catalogue reaches back to model year 1996 on this make. Records with a model year before 2000 number 8, and they are published by T4S and X4S.

On a machine that old the published route is narrower than the catalogue as a whole suggests, and a machine with no row at all has no published application — which is not the same as a machine nothing fits. What it does mean is that no manufacturer has published a mounting kit for it, so anything that goes on comes down to what a shop will stand behind.

Using the key

Put together, the procedure for a pre-Alterra machine is short. Read the displacement and the trim word off the machine. Look the displacement up in the key above to see which model years and which systems carry it. Then search the trim word on its own, in both word orders, and expect one manufacturer’s rows from each. Where the machine has a rigid rear axle, that is the field that decides between two rows with the same title.

The full published application set for this make — every row, with the systems, rear suspension, sprocket pairs and condition flags the catalogue records, and the Textron-badged years folded in — is on the Arctic Cat applications page.

If you are ordering for one of these

Identification ends at the row: which exact kit, adapter and anti-rotation hardware your year and trim takes is settled against the live catalogue, and on a machine this old it more often than not turns on a field that is not in the row title. Have these five things ready and the call is short.

• The displacement and the trim word as they are printed on the machine, not as you remember the model being advertised.
• The model year — from the VIN rather than from the year you bought it. The year is what selects the row, and the rows split mid-nameplate.
• The rear suspension, looked at rather than assumed. Two A-arms and a shock each side is independent; a solid axle or a trailing arm across the back is rigid. On this make that is the field that separates two rows with otherwise identical titles.
• A photograph of the rear hub face with the wheel off, and the bolt pattern measured rather than guessed — how to measure it is a short job with a rule.
• Any letter printed against your row in the guide, read out as the letter. On the oldest rows it may be one Camso does not define, and that is worth knowing before the kit arrives, not after.

If you are buying a used system for one of these rather than a new kit, the machine-specific mounting hardware is the part that decides whether it fits at all — it is selected for the row, not for the make.