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How much more efficient?
You may be thinking, “How much more efficient will a belt drive be compared to a chain drive?”
We have not been able to do any dyno comparisons with the Polaris system yet. Based on other applications I’ve had experience with I can only give an educated estimation.
Years ago we made performance parts for SCCA F-500 road racing cars. These are small open-wheel racers that use snowmobile engines for power. The power from the secondary shaft to the rear wheels was by roller chain for years. After a while belt-drive systems became available and we had an opportunity to compare the setups.
Checking the cars with a radar gun during the runoffs at Road Atlanta, the chain driven cars reached 100 mph on the back straightaway, while the same car with a belt-drive would reach 103 mph. This was an obvious improvement that resulted in lap times being a couple seconds faster. Due to air and road drag a gain from 100 to 103 is not just 3%, it requires more like a 5% increase in power.
So a quick estimate now would indicate that riders could see a 5% increase in power delivered to the track. On an 800cc machine with a 150 hp engine, this means another 7.5 hp to the track, and that is as much as many aftermarket products such as pipes, porting or high compression heads will give you.
If everything works out like the Polaris engineers predict, this should be a popular item that quickly will be available on other sleds in the Polaris lineup. Not just for the weight savings and low maintenance advantages, but also for the increase in efficiency and performance.
So we’ll watch to see if this system crosses over to other models in the next year or so.