It's a 2007 800, blue in color and has around 1600 miles on it. I just finished going through it, changing fluids and cleaning it up a bit. I was wondering, is the skid plate that's welded to the chassis structural or not? It protects the running gear well but I'm afraid that it will cause the frame to rust out since it's nearly impossible to clean the mud from between it and the front drive case/engine/transmission. The mud cakes in there and prevents it from drying out. I have to ride a lot of mud, there's no way around it where I live. I used to always drop the skid plate on my other machines (Yamaha/Kawaski/Suzuki) every now and then and give it a good cleaning but I don't see any easy way to do it on the x2. I was thinking that I could grind off the steel skid plate and have an aluminium one fabricated (buddy of mine runs a fab shop) that will be removable so I can clean it up easier. Has anyone ever done this with a Polaris Sportsman?

p.s. I'm dropping it off tomorrow to have some 27" mud bugs installed, the stock 489s are a decent tire as long as you don't have to run mud. Will the stock clutch setup handle these tires? I'm quite familar with when to use low range but I don't want to be stuck in low all of the time just to get moving. It's too bad they don't put a syncro in these so you can switch between low and high without stopping like they have on the wide track Ski-doos.

 

yes the skid is weldd to the frame and i never had any issues w/ then even going over stumps and rocks. stronger then alum by far . you could always put in a dalton spring in the primary to help w/ the 27" tires in taking off which i have , but still use low while mudding and hauling.

 

A power washer will clean it out between the skid and motor/tran no matter how jammed up with crud get in there. Love steel it will crack a rock before it dents. If I had a Aluminum/plastic skid I,d be on my 2nd set by now.

 

Yeah, wish the XP came with better skid plates. Steel would add to the pig's already hefty self.

 

What does the XP have? Plastic?

 

Metal & pretty good coverage.