I can tell you from experience they are not friendly at speed, hard packed trails suck, virgin snow is where its at, these things are amazing where they go, and side hill like no other. I contemplated one but decided to stick with the sled. If I was going to get one, it would for sure have the shock in place of where your current shock is instead of the rigid rod, there is no way you can make the front end go up in the rigid (stock timbersled) form, for the 800 you can get a shock, so then you have two on the slider and one in the OEM position and I think then you could pull the front end up a litltle.
