850 Time to Ride!!!

So lets cut to the chase......does ANYONE have any seat time with the new 850? Love to hear what everyone thinks of this new motor in the Axys chassis. Figure there are a few sleds dripping off the assembly line. Gotta be someone out there putting up a few miles/km's on. Let's here your thoughts.

Don't expect mine any time soon which is too bad since we have snow, but for those of you lucky enough ride...give us the dirty.

OTM

So the RMK's finally showed up and so did the snow. We got around 2-3 feet in our riding area on Tues/Wed/Thurs of this week on top of 6-12 inch base and voila....new season :face-icon-small-hap. Had to inspect some met towers and was the perfect excuse to start break in of sled.

Disclaimer....we ride sea level to 3000 feet so can't comment on HA (high altitude) performance.

Front suspension is a big jump forward. I found some of the 800 Axys I've ridden in the past were "stiff" and frankly hard to steer. The 850 clearly doesn't suffer from this. Light and dare I say "flickable" but that's what comes to mind....sorry.

Balance is typical RMK....on the money. Predictable and not phased by crossing someone else's trail. No side hill yet but I don't see any surprises there.

Motor. Clearly, absolutely, and positively.....IS IN BREAK-IN MODE!!!! Polaris have given the engine enough power to function while ensuring it is broken in properly. In the first hour...if you tried WOT, you'd get WOB (wide open bog) Got me in trouble a few times today. But as day went on the engine got better. It was reving to 8200 but you could tell it was being deliberately over-fuelled. I'm reserving judgement on power delivery until more of break-in is completed, but no complaints. Power and maybe more importantly.....clutching are good..

Shocks: Need more time to evaluate and in our riding group we will soon have WE non piggy's, WE piggy's and Fox Floats. But what I can say is the WE piggy's I have... feel pretty good.... and some of that seems to be spring related. The spring has a decent progressive rate. Soft on bottom but can still take a hit. I'm 205 lbs and when trying some wheelie drops, it feels fine.

Power, balance and light weight in a capable chassis...all good.

OTM

2nd Ride
So back up to met towers to do some maintenance. 850 Comments:

Bog, black smoke under stuck situation, low rpm miss, hard starts....all part of break in. It does some very weird things from time to time.

Engine really came alive towards end of second tank. Against the G4 we use, it pulls very close or better.

This one came with e10 ethanol fuel setting from factory but since we run 91, I adjusted and that made a big difference in engine performance.

I had to adjust back and forth from e10 to 91 to get the engine to behave during day but by the end of the 2nd tank it stayed on 91 and was working fine.

OTM