Storing Four Track Units

What is published, and where it is hidden

Camso publishes a storage procedure. It is one page of the owner’s manual, it is specific, and it is not on the product page, not on the maintenance advice pages, and not in any of the summaries that quote those pages. If you have never opened the PDF you have probably never seen it.

Before storing the Track System, it is important to perform the recommended annual maintenance tasks. Refer to the maintenance chart of page 17, section Intervals - column 200 Hrs / Annual.Camso ATV T4S Track System — Owner’s Manual, Storage — read 2026-09-26

Then the list, verbatim and in the manual’s own order:

And then the sentence that decides what your rack looks like:

Store the System by laying down each frame on its side, away from direct sunlight.Camso ATV T4S Track System — Owner’s Manual, Storage — read 2026-09-26

CAUTION: Contaminants can alter and corrode the moving parts of the Track System during storage. It is strongly recommended to perform the prescribed maintenance before storing the Track System.Camso ATV T4S Track System — Owner’s Manual, Storage — read 2026-09-26

Kimpex publishes nothing comparable that we could reach. The Commander WS4 product page publishes an initial installation time, a subsequent installation time, a flotation surface and two unit weights, and no storage instruction of any kind. The Kimpex manuals index links a track-kit instruction catalogue that renders as a browser page-turner rather than a document, so what it contains could not be read as text on 2026-09-26. If you run a Commander, the storage instruction to work from is the one in your own kit paperwork.

On its side, out of the sun

Two constraints in one sentence, and both of them are about the rack rather than the unit.

On its side means the footprint a stored unit occupies is not the footprint it makes on the ground. Standing up, a unit stands on its bottom run; laid over, it rests on a frame side and presents its whole silhouette to the floor or the shelf. The three axes Camso publishes for the assembled unit — system length, system height, system width — are therefore the three numbers a shelf, a stack and a doorway ask about, in some order that depends on which way you lay them.

Away from direct sunlight is a rubber instruction, not a tidiness one, and it rules out the obvious free storage, which is a tarp thrown over the pile outside.

Three warnings about using that table to cut lumber, and the third is why the table alone will not size a rack.

• The front and the rear unit are different sizes in every published axis. A shelf that fits two of one does not necessarily fit two of the other, and the pairs do not swap.
• For the Commander, the envelope cannot be assembled from published figures at all. A width is published. No frame length and no height is. A rack sized from the published record is a rack sized for the Camso system only.
• The published figures are the system, and the system is not everything that comes off the machine. Nothing in either source states whether an anti-rotation arm, a steering limiter or a hub adapter is inside those dimensions or outside them, and the parts that project are exactly the parts that decide whether a unit slides into a slot. Measure your own four, over the hardware, with the hardware in whatever state you are storing it.

Which is why there is no shelf spacing or stack height here: multiplied by four, a published dimension that may or may not include the projecting hardware gives you a rack that is wrong in the direction that costs you — too small. Take the five measurements off your own units instead, once, with a tape, and write them on the wall above the rack: the length, height and width of one front unit over its hardware, the same three for one rear unit, and the depth the projecting hardware adds to each. Do it while the units are off the machine and clean, which is the only time you will want to.

What the rack has to carry

Every published mass figure for these systems is a single-corner figure, and only one of them says what it excludes. The consequence for a trailer is set out on the trailering page, because that is where it does the most damage; here is the same table for the question a shelf bracket asks.

Two consequences for a rack. The rear unit is the heavier of the two in every row above that splits front from rear, so the loaded shelf is the one holding rears, and which pair goes low is a question the published figures answer rather than one you settle by what is easier to reach. And every figure is per corner, so a shelf holding two units carries twice one of these numbers, not one of them.

What no published figure tells you is where a unit’s balance sits or whether one person can carry one across a shed floor. Plan the rack as though the rear pair is the awkward one: lowest shelf, closest to the door, and nothing stacked on top of it that has to come off first in October.

Tension does not go back the way it came off

Third item on Camso’s storage list is release track tension, and the two sentences that make that matter are in the adjustments section rather than the storage one:

Higher rubber track tension reduces the risk of “derailing” and reduces sprocket “ratcheting”. Lower rubber track tension provides better traction, a smoother ride and better fuel economy.Camso ATV T4S Track System — Owner’s Manual, Adjustments — Basic tuning — read 2026-09-26

So the belt comes off tension for six months and goes back on it in the autumn — and the specification you set it to depends on the season you are about to have, not the one you just put it away after.

Note what changes between the rows and what does not: the deflection target is the same all year and the force that has to produce it is not. A set stored slack in April and re-tensioned to the summer figure in October is not set to what Camso publishes for snow.

For a winter-only machine, storage and the annual service are one job

The storage section does not carry its own task list. It points at a column of the maintenance chart, and that column has a legend of its own:

Read the legend against the heading and the interval resolves differently for two owners of the same system. Under the conditions the chart files as A it is an hours figure; under the conditions it files as B it is annual. An owner who runs tracks for one winter and tires for the rest of the year reaches the second one by the calendar, which means the strip-down at storage is the annual service, and doing it twice is doing it once.

That is also where the warranty question lives. Camso states that failure to perform the prescribed maintenance at the prescribed intervals can produce wear and damage that is not covered, and states its warranty valid when the system is installed by an authorised dealer. What a self-performed swap and a self-performed annual service do to that is set out on Doing It Yourself and the Warranty.

Labelling, so next autumn is not archaeology

The units are generic and the hardware is not. Both manufacturers say so themselves, in the course of telling you what a purchase consists of. Camso:

4 track systems (2 front, 2 rear) & adapted mount kit to fit tracks on your vehicleCamso ATV T4S product page, What’s included — read 2026-09-26

Kimpex, more explicitly, because it sells the pieces as separate selections:

To install tracks on your ATV, you need: Step 1 — Choose your WS4 Track kit. Step 2 — Select the proper track adapter (BOM1) depending on your VTT model. Step 3 — Select the proper Front anti-rotation (BOM2) and rear (BOM3).Kimpex Commander WS4 track kit product page, Description — read 2026-09-26

Four units that are the same product on every machine they fit, and then hardware selected for your machine — an adapted mount kit in Camso’s wording, or an adapter plus a front and a rear anti-rotation selection in Kimpex’s. That hardware is the part that ends up in an unlabelled bucket in April and the part you cannot identify by looking at it in October.

Four things are worth writing on the bag. Three you can copy off paperwork; the fourth you may have to count.

Which end each unit came off

Front and rear units differ in published width, published length, published height and published weight, and the belts are not symmetrical either. The manual says so in the same section as the storage instruction:

Front track: can be installed in both direction. Rear track: arrow molded on rear tracks must point out, away from Track system frames.Camso ATV T4S Track System — Owner’s Manual, Storage — read 2026-09-26

A rear belt has a molded arrow and an orientation; a front belt does not. Mark the frames F and R before they leave the machine, because the published dimensions that distinguish them run from rather more than an inch down to rather less, and you will not eyeball that across a dark shed.

The serial number, in the blank Camso printed for it

The manual’s front matter carries a field with the serial family already filled in and the rest left blank:

System Serial Number: 6622_ _ _ _ _ _ _Camso ATV T4S Track System — Owner’s Manual, Introduction — serial number location — read 2026-09-26

Filling it in is the cheapest labelling act available, and that prefix is shared across two generations of system, which is a separate trap covered on A 6622 Serial Is Ambiguous. A system with no legible decals at all is a different problem, and it is on An Unmarked System in a Barn.

The machine, spelled the way the catalogue spells it

The string that finds your hardware again is the one the application catalogue uses, not the one on the tank badge. The catalogue carries 1006 distinct part numbers across its rows, each tied to a machine title, a model-year span and a system — and the titles diverge from the badge in ways that are documented make by make under Machines. Write the make, the title as the catalogue gives it, the model year and the system on the bag. Three of those four are on the invoice.

The sprocket count, which is the one nobody remembers

Sprockets are the part of a kit least recoverable by looking. Of the rows that publish a pair, 129 publish a different tooth count front and rear, and 11 distinct pairs occur across the catalogue: 15/15, 15/16, 16/15, 16/16, 16/17, 16/18, 17/16, 17/17, 17/18, 18/17, 18/18. A bag of hardware with no note in it tells you nothing about which of those you own.

The rows that publish no pair at all are all from one system — WS4 — so for that system the tooth count is not in the published record either, and counting the teeth before the units go on the rack is the only way it gets written down.

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

Putting them back on in the autumn

Everything above is easier to do in April than to undo in October. The order that follows from the published instructions:

• Tension to the season you are about to ride, not the one you put them away after. The deflection target is the same all year and the force that produces it is not, so re-tension off the row of the table above that matches the coming season.
• Match the units to the end they came off, F to front and R to rear, before anything is bolted up. The published dimensions differ by roughly an inch in places, which you will not eyeball in a dark shed.
• Check the rear belts for the molded arrow and fit them the way it points. Front belts carry no orientation; rear ones do.
• Take the labelled bag with you to the machine, and if the sprocket count on the note does not match what is on the shaft, stop there rather than forcing it.
• If the strip-down at storage was the annual service, write the date on the same card as the measurements. That is the record a warranty conversation asks for.

Kimpex publishes an initial installation time and a subsequent swap time on the Commander product page, and those are the only published figures for how long any of this takes. Nothing published gives a removal time, so the first swap is the one to give yourself a whole morning for.