Some snowmobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) falsely insinuate that you must use their brand of parts and lubricants or risk losing your snowmobile warranty.
Some dealerships even ask new-sled owners to sign forms agreeing to use the OEM private-label-branded oil or risk losing their factory warranty.
It’s an unethical scare tactic designed to bully riders into buying the typically more expensive OEM brand of lubricants.
And it’s illegal.
Know your rights
The Magnuson Moss Warranty Act protects your right as an American to choose whichever brand of parts or lubricants you think is best for your snowmobile.
Remember these key points regarding warranty coverage:
- It is illegal to tie warranty coverage to whichever brand of parts or lubricants you use. Manufacturers that do so must provide the OEM parts or lubricants free of charge.
- You have the freedom to choose how you protect your vehicles and equipment.
- Manufacturers can’t deny warranty coverage without evidence showing that the aftermarket part or lubricant caused a failure.
Get the facts about your rights here. While you’re there, get your free Runs on Freedom decal to show your support for consumer rights.
AMSOIL Runs on Freedom Limited Snowmobile Warranty
We’re not stopping there, however.
To show our support for riders and to double-down on our confidence in our snowmobile oil, we created the new Runs on Freedom Limited Snowmobile Warranty.
It covers engine repairs for two years or 5,000 miles (8,000 km), whichever comes first, on current model-year or newer sleds that use AMSOIL INTERCEPTOR® Synthetic 2-Stroke Oil exclusively.
Snowmobile warranty benefits
This is our way of assuring riders that we stand behind our products and the people who use them. It removes any hurdles you may have about using an aftermarket lubricant in place of the OEM lubricant in your new sled.
Hassle-free – The AMSOIL Runs on Freedom Limited Snowmobile Warranty is a no-fault warranty. That means you don’t have to prove the oil caused a failure in the unlikely event of engine problems. You simply must be a registered participant in the warranty, and we’ll cover the repair bill for qualified parts and labor.
There’s no need to submit oil samples or defective parts for inspection. Our warranty is designed to be as simple as possible for you. This means we are going to pay to fix some defective OEM parts that fail for reasons unrelated to our oil, but we’re more concerned about protecting our loyal customers than maximizing profits.
Free – We don’t charge a fee to participate in the AMSOIL Runs on Freedom Limited Snowmobile Warranty. Just meet the qualifications spelled out here and you’re in.
Flexible – We allow you to register a qualifying sled up to 18 months after you’ve taken physical delivery of it. Even if you picked up your current model-year sled last fall, you may still register for this warranty now. Bear in mind, however, that the warranty term lasts for two years or 5,000 miles (8,000 km), so if you register a sled 18 months after having taken delivery of it, you’d be covered for a maximum of six months.
Proven snowmobile protection
You might be thinking, “I have to use AMSOIL INTERCEPTOR exclusively?”
Yes, but why wouldn’t you want to? It delivers proven protection against wear and power-robbing deposits in today’s advanced sleds. Plus, it typically costs less than OEM oils.
Sign up as an AMSOIL Preferred Customer and buy INTERCEPTOR for up to 25% off retail AND get fast, free shipping right to your door.
To prove INTERCEPTOR’s effectiveness, we tested it in a rental Polaris* RMK* 850 used in the Canadian mountains. You know how riders treat rentals. After the season, we tore down the engine to see how INTERCEPTOR fared. See the results for yourself.
Check out the video, too.
Video transcript: Grizzly Lodge Rental Torture Test
This sled is part of a cooperative effort between AMSOIL and Grizzly Lodge. We wanted to torture a snowmobile, and there’s no better way to do that than embed it in a rental fleet and put it in the mountains. A day in the life of a rental sled here specifically, they put on a pile of trail miles going down to our staging area which varies from 20 to 30 kilometers away to pick clients up. Clients are strapping their big bags on the back of these things, hauling their bags up here back up the trail so they’re running hot sometimes.
Next morning it’s up the mountain and into the mountains on the pin all the time. People like to ride hard, and they seem to like to ride rental sleds even harder. We also use them to tow each other up and down the hill sometimes when we have to deliver a bunch of rental sleds to our staging area. We don’t have the space to keep them all in a heated shop, so they all live outside.
We have often minus 35 in the wintertime. That means a lot of cold starts so lubrication is extremely important. If the sled fails, that’s something we don’t want to see. If it fails on the trail or if it fails in the mountain, either way it’s inconveniencing the customer.
And, basically, we need to find a way to get another sled up to them or they need to find a way to get back down to us, and it costs them a day of riding. So when you’ve come for three nights and two days riding and one of those days is taken up by rescuing a machine out of the backcountry, we really want to avoid those things at all cost. So it’s really, really important to us to keep them running in as top-notch condition as we can keep them. All of our rentals take a great deal of abuse during the season, but we specifically made sure this sled got most of the abuse.
Grizzly Lodge has rented this sled. They’ve guided on it. They’ve done all kinds of terrible things to it. We’re going to take it apart.
We’re going to show you how great Interceptor performed under those extreme conditions. You can see these are moving all the way open and then all the way closed which indicates that the power valves are free and working. The cylinder head looks beautiful. There’s no sign of any major carbon deposits on there.
There’s a little bit of coloration around the exhaust port but, other than that, it looks really good. So we’re checking the rings, and the rings are free, indicating there’s no carbon buildup in the lands. The pistons look good. You can see the skirts are not scuffed.
We’re going to check the rod bearings and make sure that there’s no axial play, there’s no lateral movement of the rod bearings. Crank still turns freely so everything looks good as far as the rod bearings go. I mean, the cross hatches are still in the cylinder. There’s no excess carbon depositing on the crowns.
It’s a very, very thin layer of carbon which is normal. You can tell that it’s thin because of the fuel wash bands on top of the piston. It gives you kind of an idea of how thick that carbon is and it’s very, very thin. So that’s a good sign.
Under crowns of the pistons don’t show any excess staining, and generally that’s a sign of how much heat that piston is seeing. Oil without enough detergency will generally put a black stain on the bottom of that piston. We’re not seeing that here. Overall I’d say this engine for a field engine with this amount of time on it, this thing looks good.
If you plan on buying a new two-stroke sled soon, don’t let the snowmobile manufacturer bully you into using its expensive lubricants.
Instead, use AMSOIL INTERCEPTOR and register for the AMSOIL Runs on Freedom Limited Snowmobile Warranty. You’ll get maximum protection for your sled and maximum peace of mind for yourself.
This article is part of our Snowmobile Oil and Maintenance guide. See every article in the guide.
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AMSOIL Staff articles draw on the combined expertise of AMSOIL engineers, chemists, Technical Services specialists, technical writers and product marketers. Content is developed from AMSOIL data sheets, laboratory and field testing, oil-analysis results and more than 50 years of synthetic-lubricant development. Topics span automotive, diesel, powersports, marine, small-engine, agricultural and industrial equipment, covering lubrication fundamentals, maintenance practices, product selection and real-world customer experience.
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