Twenty-five straight years of building SnoWest project sleds culminates with the best sled we’ve yet assembled.
Granted, building project sleds in 2018 isn’t the same as it was in 1993. Our first build was a 1993 Polaris XLT. It had just been released as a new model. Starting Line Products’ Jim Noble spend the summer with a prototype XLT working on triple pipes, Ultra-Lite skis and suspension upgrades. We also tested a Kimpex Bighorn track on that sled (just to really date things).
Twenty-five years later, we’ve built another awesome Polaris. This one might be the best yet.
Project Ron Burgundy (we didn’t name that first sled... we didn’t know it was the first at the time) is a 2018 Polaris 800 Pro RMK 163. We enlisted Dan Adams and his Next Level Riding Clinics crew to help with the build, which took part mostly in Alpine, Wyoming, at Dan’s shop. Jason Blair and Dylan Haapala build a couple dozen sleds a year at the Next Level shop, so plugging one more into the assembly line seemed like an easy fit.
The project sled transformed from a plain-Jane stocker to one of the most-recognizable sleds in the industry through the addition of some awesome aftermarket products and some keen design ideas. We’re snowmobile enthusiasts to the core, and the project build is our fix for getting wild with mods.
We had a blast ripping through trees and blasting through technical terrain on this build. And judging by the look on his face, it’s safe to say Dan Adams had a blast on the sled as well. The SLP performance mods gave this sled the punch it really needed. At this point, we’d say the motor package on Project Ron Burgundy has a comparable feel to the 2019 850 Patriot engine. The bottom end is crisp, responsive and strong, and it pulls hard through the mid range without signing off early on top. And the narrow ZRP front end and shorter Skinz running boards give the chassis a feel that is also similar to the 2019 850 Pro RMK. We can’t recommend these modifications enough to anyone with a 2016-and-newer 800 Pro RMK.