Polaris created a new class of high performance side-by- side vehicles when it brought the Ranger RZR to market and the company has continued to reach new levels in this class year after year.
When Polaris introduced the RZR XP 900 in 2011, the company took the center podium while competitors didn’t even compete in the race, achieving new levels of greatness in power, suspension and performance. It’s such a great ma- chine right out of the box that it’s hard to imagine making it much better. But inevitably, a year after its debut, there are some really cool aftermarket upgrades available for the XP.
We thought it would be a crying shame not to pick one up and build a project car. So we took a slightly used 2011 XP to Rexburg Motorsports in eastern Idaho and asked them to help us with phase one of our build.
Rexburg Motorsports has been beefing up and build- ing custom side-by-sides since the early days of the Yamaha Rhino. You also probably didn’t know that Rexburg Motor- sports is the largest and highest volume motorsports dealer west of the Mississippi.
Suspension
The suspension on the XP is excellent, with 14 inches of travel and another industry first 3-link rear suspension set up on the stock machine. But we’ve noticed that with all the power that is available from the XP’s 875cc powerplant and an insatiable need for speed, it’s still relatively easy to push the suspension to its limits in severe whooped sections of trail and other types of terrain that mankind was not intended to travel across at high speeds.
While the XP’s suspension is excellent, we thought it would be a good idea to take it from excellent to amazing. So we picked up HCR’s long travel kit for the XP to take our ride to another level in comfort, safety and control. This suspension should definitely make it more difficult to crash our RZR because we refuse to let our foot off of the accel- erator through those extreme sections of trail.
In fact, when we described to HCR the severe nature of our riding style, they said that there’s no problem with any- thing we described. However, they did advise that we don’t slide sideways into a boulder going 40 or 50 mph and that we don’t “lawn-dart” the thing from 15 or 20 feet in the air and land on a side of a wheel.
At the end of the conversation, all we could promise was that we would do our best.
Protection
The roll cage that comes stock on the RZR should save your life in the event of a pretty substantial crash. We saw a RZR 4 that had hit a deep rut in a road while traveling down the trail at 40 or so mph. The machine’s front tires wedged into a rut and it endo’d, landing on the front of its cage. The cage was pretty smashed, but the riders walked away.
However, in the event of a crash at higher speeds, the odds of the stock cage holding together go down. One of the first things we’ll do to the XP is add a heavier aftermarket roll cage to give us better protection in the event of a crash. We chose TMW Offroad’s Intimidator cage because it’s made out of 1.75-inch diameter, .095 wall steel tubing and quality construction that will be up to par with how we want to ride.
We also love the look of this cage. We’ll also add TMW’s half doors so we can keep our legs in the ride at all times. The Intimidator cage includes a rear bumper in its design and we’ll add TMW’s front bumper with race braces to complete the look and add some protection on the front end.
Comfort
Because we want to ride harder and longer on every ride, we’re adding a set of Revolver suspension race seats from Twisted Stitch along with a set of 3-inch padded 5-point harnesses from Crow Enterprizes. The deep bolsters on these seats should hold us in nicely and the way our butts are sus- pended above the seat frame should help soak up the spine compressing bumps we expect to experience.
Traction
We’re upgrading from our stock wheels and tires in the dirt with a set of ITP T7 aluminum beadlock wheels fitted with 8-ply Pitbull Growler II tires. For the sand we’re using a set of ITP’s T9 spun aluminum Pro Mod wheels mounted with ITP’s new Dune Star front and rear sand tires.
Now that we’ve built the car, it’s time to add more power and visibility. In our next issue, we’ll add a turbo kit, lighting, and a graphics wrap.
