1986 Arctic Cat Cheetah 530 engineering unit

This is much like the stock production 1986 Cheetah 530 model except that this is an early engineering unit, hand-built in nearly every way at least a year before the production models came off the assembly line. This has a 1985 serial number, on what appears to have began as a 1985 Panther tunnel. That tunnel is mated to a 1985 El Tigre AFS bulkhead. This has the new-for-1986 a-arms and spindles on it but they appear to have been hand fabricated. The rear tunnel extension was hand fabricated and in really poor condition when we were restoring this so this now has a production rear tunnel extension on it. The rear rack was missing entirely so we replicated one as closely as we could using the original mount points and old brochure images as a guide. The dash, speedometer and tachometer looks to have originally been from a 1985 Cougar, the liquid engine temperature gauge has been hand drilled into the console. Nearly the entire rear suspension appears to have been hand fabricated, welded and assembled. The original plastic slides looked to be 121" slides with extension slides mated up to them so as to have enough length for the new-at-the-time 156 track length...when we installed new slides we installed them in the same way as the originals. The original 156" track had unusual markings on it from Yokahama, not the traditional Arctic Cat embossing and part number. The original track was in poor condition so it has a production 1986 track on it now. The seat material is of the coarser 1985 texture (not the smoother 1986 type) and does not have the Arctic Cat logo printed on it the way the production models do. The hood on this is an early version of a 1986-style hood. This sled was purchased out of the Salvage Department in Thief River Falls by a dealer in Albuquerque New Mexico during a sale they held in about 1986. It had been mostly used-up during the engineering/field test process. After getting to New Mexico it was placed in storage to be a future project but nothing further happened with it over 35+ years and we purchased it from the now former dealer and brought it back up here to Minnesota in early 2022. Upon beginning our dismantling and resurrection of this, it was cool to be plucking old caked-on dirt and grass out of the skid frame that was remnants of its final rides in field testing...all the idler wheel bearings needed replacing for sure. We are uncertain how many of these pre-production Cheetahs were built...possibly 2? We dont think this is the machine used in the brochure images for 1986 but we cannot be certain about that. Joey Hallstrom recalls doing some riding on the earliest Cheetah field test models in The Beltrami State Forest and other areas too. We have put over 100 miles on this since completing the restoration, it is again ready to ride anywhere. Serial number 8505650.