Riding With Critics
Although anyone who "didn't have a dog in the fight" who rode Puff was very impressed by its handling and ride, it was time to go out with some of the top R&D people in the business-the Polaris factory mountain crew, including Ostroski and Marty Sampson. These guys know their stuff and are constantly trying to fix and improve things.
We actually had the opportunity to compare Puff with the 2008 prototypes from Polaris-the Dragon 700 and 800. It was good to see how this year's project sled would stack up to the sleds of the future.
Our results were somewhat mixed.
One engineer would ride Puff and comment that it was jetted too lean. Another would ride it and say it was jetted too rich. One would really like the suspension setup, the other would find shortcomings in the suspension. All seemed to like the parts of the project sled that said "Polaris."
For the most part we were riding in the same crappy snow that seemed to be the theme for most of the winter-well used, crusty on top, dry with no base all the way down to the dirt. However, we did find an isolated drainage that for some reason had remained undiscovered and had collected more than its share of the drifting snow. Here we were able to find the kind of powder that served as a good test to the machines.
It was under these conditions that we found an instance in which the EzRyde suspension required a little more tuning. It seems that while trying to carve through the trees, Puff had a tendency to trench a little worse than the other sleds. It was determined that the rear suspension mounting created a predisposition for the rear arm to push the skid frame down in the back and wouldn't allow it to pop on top of the snow to plane.
Power-wise, Puff could hold its own. And of course through the bumps nothing would even come close to the ride. But we had discovered a weakness in what was expected to be an all-around great sled. So it was back to Bucky's for more tuning and testing.