Bottom Line Traction Products

Unique Products Backed by Quality Workmanship is the Bottom Line

Minnasota Wordwide, 2001, page 24 & 28

Sucking up to potential advertisers is part of the game. This puff piece is just another story where the author was told a fairytale and didn't know enough about the subject to know it. This happens more than you would think! Doo Talk

This article demonstrates Ralphs willingness to spin a tall tale that has little basis in reality!!! He continued spinning similar tall tales about his mediocre products!!! Medocre product because he claimed credit for old ideas ie. flat-top host bars / 75 degree turning carbide.

Tall Tales - are Trumped by Facts

... By 1988,... Ralph had now developed relationships with Black Magic and Pro-5, the premiere performance companies for Arctic Cat and Polaris respectively. It was at Pro-5, Ralph was introduced to the intial designs for the push through stud, by Pro-5 owner Burt Basset and race legend Larry Rugland.

"The push through design was a great idea, but Burt and Larry were having trouble coming up with a way to hold the back of the stud during installation," said Ralph. " After some trial and error, I came up with the idea of putting a hex into the base and did an initial run of 1,000 studs."

1975 - Hot Tip

The idea worked unfortunately, the partnership plans to produce and market thousands of the innovative traction devices never materialized. Soon after, the rest of the industry caught wind of the idea, and today, the push through design dominates the traction industry and is available from several makers.

... "with so much competition and rumbling behind the scenes about a patent lawsuit on the push through design, I saw the hand writing on the wall."

With plenty of competition for push through studs, Ralph developed a new traction device called the TCD. This pyramid shaped stud proved to be bullet proof, offering incredible traction and wear. "I looked at the push through stud, corrected some of the flaws and basically made a better stud," said Ralph. The TCD has since been patented, accepted by many snowmobilers and proven to be extremely reliable.

Bullet proof with incredible traction and wear, hard to believe TCD"S were only on the market from 1996 - 2002 despite the caption under the photo of a TCD stating "it continues to win over fans every season."

photo of NEW TCD (weight .0232) (height 1.093) & USED TCD with 2,000 miles (weight .0194) (height .765) Differance weight loss .0038, height loss .328

They made their "fill in" Hi-Preformance push through studs from 1994 - 1996.

Their 1995 Brochure says "These Hi-Performance Studs are the highest in quality and design. All DOMINATOR studs feature a push-thru design, 7mm body, and a large 7/8" head with a Torx slot for easy installation. These studs are light weight and strong."

They came out with a Stainless Steel push thru stud for 2006. The head is now 1" instead of 7/8" and the shaft is 5/16"instead of 7mm. (Only 16 years later than Fast -Trak's EXCELLANT STUDS)

They use the word STANDARD loosely - when you offer only limited models it is ingenuous to say they are the STANDARD. ie. only providing square backer plates, 7mm threads and 7/8" heads. Flat Top wear bars are a distinction without a differance functionally.

Bottom Line Traction Products is a leader in wearbar technology, but we also need to offer a complete traction control package, With that, we decided to offer a stud to go along with the bars. While not innovative, Bottom Line Traction Products did have some unique characteristics on their DOMINATOR series push-thru studs. We were the first to offer a 7mm body as a standard, the first with a 13 degree steel point for racing and the first with lightweight 1/2 height fastener nuts. We were also first to offer the square backer plate as standard.

These studs were offered to complete the traction product package, but they were simply a "fill in" for what was to come. While the studs provided adequate traction, a real Traction Control Devise was being developed.

Bob Bracey - Hot-Tip stud -1975 | Patent filed -Dec.1986 | Hex-Terminator

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