An Unmarked System in a Barn

What to record before anything comes apart

The order matters only in that the photographs are taken first. A set that has been unbolted and stacked against a wall has lost the two things hardest to reconstruct: how the mount kit sat on the hub, and which unit was front and which was rear.

1. Track width across the widest point of the lugs, front unit and rear unit measured separately. They are not the same figure on any system here, and the rear is where the published widths diverge.
2. Track length, measured around the outside of the belt rather than along the frame. The published figure is the belt, so a tape run along the frame is measuring a different thing.
3. Mid-rollers counted on one front unit and one rear unit, from the inboard side.
4. Whether the length of belt on the ground rides on wheels or on a plastic slide, and if there is a slide, whether it runs the full length.
5. Teeth on the drive sprocket. Count them twice, with a strip of tape on the first tooth, and record the front and rear sprockets separately — on the Camso systems the catalogue records them as a pair and the two are frequently different.
6. Every casting mark, moulded logo, wheel-cap stamp and plate on one front and one rear unit, photographed rather than transcribed.
7. The mount kit and anti-rotation hardware, photographed in place before anything is undone.

Photographed, not transcribed, for a specific reason: a serial copied out by hand with one transposed character resolves to a different generation of the same system, which is the wrong exploded diagram and the wrong parts. A photograph can be re-read. A transcription cannot be checked against anything.

The published figures that differ

The rows below are the figures published for all three current systems. Each is printed in the units its own manufacturer uses, and nothing here is converted — a tape measure reads in whichever unit you have, and converting before comparing is where mistakes start.

What the measurements separate, and what they do not

The rear track width and both track lengths separate the Kimpex system from the Camso pair. The front width does not: all three publish the same front figure, so a tape across the front unit settles nothing at all.

Nothing in the published dimensions separates a T4S from an X4S. Width, length, lug height, ground coverage, sprocket range, hub and frame are published identically for both. The only published figures that differ are the unit weights in the table above and the machine rating — Camso publishes the X4S for all-terrain 300 to 1000cc and side-by-side 400 to 700cc, and the T4S for all-terrain 300 to 1000cc. A used unit with a season of mud packed inside the frame is not weighable to a pound and a half, so in a barn that difference is not a discriminator. It is an argument for finding the plate.

Do not compare the footprint figures. Camso publishes ground coverage in square inches and Kimpex publishes flotation surface in square metres and square inches. Neither states whether the two are measured the same way, so a larger figure on one page is not a larger footprint on the ground.

Counting sprocket teeth, and the make that publishes none

Camso publishes its sprocket as a tooth range. Kimpex publishes its sprocket as a diameter with an all-season description. Those are two different measurements of the same part, and there is no arithmetic that turns one into the other.

The application catalogue reflects that split. It records a sprocket pair against the Camso rows and against no Commander WS4 row at all. Across the 3 current systems it holds 11 distinct pairs, with tooth counts running 15–18— which is the range Camso publishes, arrived at from the other direction.

The set of published pairs is the same for both Camso systems, so a tooth count does not separate a T4S from an X4S either. And a tooth count cannot be checked against a Kimpex figure, because Kimpex publishes none. That is absence of published data, not absence of teeth: count them, record them, and hand the figure over rather than concluding from it.

Counted from the published applications, read 2026-09-26. Both manufacturers revise their lists, so re-check a figure before you order against it.

Wheels or a slide

Kimpex publishes two things about the Commander WS4 that bear directly on this:

Three wheels on the ground for less steering effort
System without slider shoe for all season performanceKimpex, Commander WS4 Track Kit, read 2026-09-26

A unit with a slider shoe therefore does not match what Kimpex publishes for the Commander WS4. That narrows the field without naming the answer: Camso publishes no guide or slider description on either the T4S or the X4S page, read 2026-09-26, and neither page covers the lines that came before them. So a slide is evidence about one system and silence about the others.

The wheels themselves are a weaker signal than they look. The T4S page publishes 5.28 & 7.95 in encapsulated and sealed wheels; the X4S page publishes 5.3 & 7.9 in. Those read as the same two wheels quoted to different precision, but the manufacturer does not say so, and a figure measured off a worn wheel with an elastomer band on it will not settle the difference. Record the diameters; do not decide anything with them.

The plate is the thing that ends it

The Camso and Camoplast ATV systems are documented by a serial made of a four-digit family code, a two-letter code, and then the unit’s own digits. The family code names the system, the two-letter code carries the model year, and together they resolve to one generation of one product.

The catch is that a family code is not unique to a generation. The 6622 family covers both the Camoplast-era TATOU 4S and the current Camso T4S, so a plate in that family narrows the set to two products a decade apart and the two-letter segment is what separates them. The decode is on A 6622 Serial Is Ambiguous. Photograph the plate rather than retyping it: one transposed letter is a different model year, a different exploded diagram and a different parts list, and nothing about the mistake announces itself.

Where the plate is legible, the family code and the two-letter segment together are what end the guessing — quote both when you order. The exploded diagram and the parts list are published per generation, so the family code on its own can put you in the right family and the wrong decade. Where the plate is gone or unreadable, the photographs and the measurements go to the parts desk instead, and that is the point of taking them in the order above.

One family will not be found this way. The application catalogue holds the 3 current systems — WS4, T4S, X4S— and the R4S is not among them; the address we hold for its Camso product page returned HTTP 404 on 2026-09-26. An eight-inch-track set is a different shape from anything in the table above, and the route for it is Is That an R4S?, with the production status on Camso’s Small-Bore System Is Out of Production.

What still has to be checked against the machine

Narrowing an unmarked set to a family says nothing about whether it belongs on the machine it is bolted to. Those are separate questions, and the second is the expensive one: whether a published application exists for that machine, and whether the mount kit underneath is the one published for it. A set bolted to a quad is evidence that somebody bolted it there.

The parts most often missing from a private sale are the vehicle-specific ones. Kimpex publishes the adapter and the anti-rotation kits as selections keyed to the model, separately from the track kit:

Select the proper track adapter (BOM1) depending on your VTT model
Select the proper Front anti-rotation (BOM2) and rear (BOM3)Kimpex, Commander WS4 Track Kit, read 2026-09-26

A set that arrives without them is a set with parts to order, and the parts are ordered against the machine rather than against the tracks.

Nor does any of it tell you what the install will require of the machine. Camso flags conditions against individual applications and defines them in a legend, but it does not publish what a condition interferes with on a given machine — so ask the shop that will fit it what comes off yours before you buy the set. Documented installs are in Field Notes. Whether a warranty survives a private sale and an unassisted install is a separate question again, and it is on Doing It Yourself and the Warranty.

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.

If the machine turns out to have no track hardware on it at all and the question is what it takes, the measurement that starts that job is on Measuring Your Own Bolt Pattern, and the published applications per make are under Machines.