Hey guys....thanks for the patience. Crazy past few days as we move into a new facility, take in a container+ in freight and goods, and deal with a Canadian dealer who called and needed ton of product immediately. Good stuff, but lots to manage. That said, the RZR mount has remained right in this top part of the list as we kicked a ton of other things down. I want to lay out our process, some of the different scenarios we kicked around and the way we've decided to move forward.
First, one guy as part of our background conversations noted that Polaris does not offer their plow for the XP900. They said the Polaris had told them sport vehicles shouldn't use one. I LOVE RZR's and am I big supporter of Polaris as they are part of our state of MN....but I thought that was a bit of baloney. Makes me wonder if they saw some of these engineering issues. They are happy to offer one for older RZR's.
That said, as we started considering options and based on multiple conversations,
we came up with three possible solutions:
1.
Make new push tubes with steeper angles.
It's possible, and we may still do this, but it could compromise durability as pressing snow with such severe downward angles is not, perhaps, a great option. Plus we'd need at least three months to design, produce and test all this. But it could be useful for other machines and also related to how some guys modify their machines. We'll see what summer holds for this project.
2.
Make a new plow mount with brackets that drop it down to level it off.
Seems like it'd reduce too much ground clearance and we don't want guys to have to take off the mount to go crawling or mudding. So no dice.
3.
Build some flex into the system.
The final thought was a modified mount and is, perhaps, a stroke of genius from one of our dealers. He has a light-duty truck with a plow from another company with the exact same situation. However, that company built some "flex" into their mounting system that allows the blade more freedom to move slightly up and down and work with gravity, etc. So the weight of the blade pushes it downward.
American Eagle actually does this with their systems. Our dealer was saying ours is built so freakin' solid (which is good), but it would benefit from a bit of flex to deal with angles. This would be consistent with other industry practices. Should have new mount done in two weeks. We have some other longer-range ideas that would work for all our plows including electric downward force devices that work with flexible systems, etc. Hopefully we will have created the perfect balance of sturdiness and flex. Always the challenge of new design.
Many of you have talked to Scott, our engineer, and provided really helpful suggestions as well. Love working with you. You all, as I said earlier, get new mounts for free. Plus, if you already have our system, shoot me a PM anytime in 2012 if you need another product from us and I'll give you 10% off whatever you'd like. We have a number of exciting things in the pipeline for RZR's, so it could be fun.
I'll keep you posted every 24-48 hours.
Peter Kapsner, Ph.D.
President and Co-Owner
Motoalliance
Moto Alliance
1-866-527-7637