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The seating position's roleOn the 600 XC Edge with the conventional seating position, the improvement with the Fox PS3 shock was large enough to make a convincing difference. The good news is that you can retrofit this new shock to your regular Edge XC SP chassis and gain a much improved, safer and smoother performing rear suspension.
As Marty explained, there was a good reason for the improved handling and that's good news for those of us who still like the conventional seating position. Later in the evening we took in the informative Polaris tech session. One of the main topics was the new focus on suspension ride quality. Polaris surveys had found that the biggest concern among riders was "bottoming out" and the consequent possibility of uncomfortable back pain, as the average age of snowmobilers creeps up.
To prevent this bottoming out, Polaris engineers have gone to a more progressive action on both springs and dampening, and the position sensitive shocks allow this. With the PS 5 shock there is no need to compromise on rebound, so the calibration can be correct both at full bump and rebound.
As a result everything feels firmer, and you don't get tossed around on the trail. There's a difference in philosophy between the Edge with its Fox PS3 shock and machines with the rider forward position. With rider forward you move away from the problem, with the new Fox PS3 on the Edge, you solve the basic problem.
The Fox PS3 shocks will be available as an accessory for earlier Edge models for a couple of hundred bucks. I'm picking up this package for my '03. When Polaris riders discover the benefits, I believe this will be a hot ticket item.