Well I changed from a Prairie 650 to a AC 650 and I find the steering to light. AS a matter of fact when I juice it on pavement it will not turn for 30 or 40 yards, its not doing a wheelie its just squatting enough to offer very little steering feel. The heavy steering on the Prairie used to bother me a little on pavement, but work flawlessly on dirt. I tried jacking the rear shocks up all the way and I just installed a set of 27" mud lights all the way around.

Should I lighten up the front shocks a little (currently middle position) or will it wallow in the corners?

Do you guys try to sit more on the tank when riding aggresivily?

 

I think that you are just noticing one of the handling differences in going from a straight axel machine with limited suspension travel to completely independent suspension with a huge amount of travel. On pavement, under full throttle, there is so much weight transferred to the back that you can't help but have alot of "push" under power. In theory, your pre-load being set to the stiffest in the back and softest in the front would keep the weight transfer to a minimum, but you obviously wouldn't want to do that for fear of screwing up other ride characteristics. Maybe try the stiffest pre-load in front and back. That way, even though your rear shocks are free to compress as much as they want, your front shocks can only extend slightly further than their "ride height position". In other words, you can't limit the compression of the rear shocks, but you can limit the extension of the fronts by starting off in the longest shock length that you can (stiffest pre-load). That should limit weight transfer, and reduce your on power push a little bit.
I have to wonder, though, if it's worth messing with in the first place for just that one senario.
Maybe someone else will chime in also.

 

Sounds normal to me. Former Polarises did the same. When all the weight is transferred to the rear, the front is not going to steer very much.
You can get it off pavement too with agressive tires. Sometimes you have to get off the throttle to make a turn.

DT

 

I have gator 27" on my 650 v2 and when I put them on I noticed a big difference in the steering over the stock tires.

 

Stiffer springs in the rear would help, but riding comfort would possible be affected, depending on how much stiffer the new springs were.

 

Thanks guy's, great input. I guess I am used to steering by just jabbing the throttle and swinging that straight axle around behind me, this machine will require some getting used to. How soon I forget that it toke me over a month to figure out to make the Prairie handle satisfactorly for me. I ordered a Dyna module wich I will install once the rings are seated, I wonder if that will cause more squat in the back, I guess it will.

 

Put the Dyna in and stab the throttle from the starting line and I gaurantee you will not be able to turn until the wheels return to the ground.

 

Hey Chumley, what model Dyna did you install DFS10-1 as advertised by Dyna's web site? I ordered one off EBAY that was specifically advertised for the AC 650 and the one I received is for a Brute Force (DFS2-15), it should probably work, but I want to be cautious.

 

I don't remember the specific model, but I remeber that the one I ordered was for the prairie not the BF. I wanna say it was model 12 or 13, not 10, but I can't remember for sure. I will try to dig up the paperwork and see. Perhaps someone else can verify if the BF module will work or not, because I don't know.

 

Dyna Module #DFS2-13