I also have to agree with Kagey on his assessment of fewer rear suspension parts on the Mag vs. the SP. It’s not that I expect to have problems with the more complicated Sportsman but it just seems logical the simpler rear end design of the Mag will likely have a longer, more trouble-free life.

Is anyone else having trouble editing posts? I was just going to tack this on to my last post and it won’t let me edit. Same thing happened yesterday.

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FloodRunner, on the Wisconsin River

 

Good luck Jamie with whatever you buy but it would be totally foolish to not buy the Sportsman over the Magnum 500 just because of the "extra maintenence." This "extra" maintenence might involve 8 more minutes! If you consider pumping grease into a zerk fitting "maintenence" then..........

 

I had about 4.5-5 psi that day, when I put 7 psi it starts to ride alittle like a tank. Arctic Cat says to run 5 psi what does he run?

I dought it was the psi that mad it ride better. I think it was the terain. We were riding in a feild that had just been chopped-up/plowed, it had a lot of big clumps of dirt that the semi-independent rear suspesion on my 500 handled alot better than the swingarm suspension on the Polaris 400/Magnum.

Arctic Cat 500, Need I say more?

 

Rob, forgot that was you, This might intrest you on the Cats stock tires. It gets really hot here in the summer when we ride and we found that we could run 5 to 5.5 psi in the tires on the cat 500 when we started to ride and (The tires were Titans) The ride seemed to always stiffen the harder we rode so I got suspisious and we stopped and I checked the air pressure in the tires on the cat and they had built up nearly a whole pound per tire slightly more in the front than on the rear we checked a Honda 400 and it had only a slight buildup . My Dunlop equiped Magnum had built up a half pound in the fronts and I could feel a diffrence so I can only imagine what my friend was feeling. I later changed to the Goodyears and have not noticed any pressure buildups with them . I have checked them a couple of times so I tend to believe that the tires may be the main cause for his hard steering and stiff ride. Just though I,d mention this in case you ever noticed this. For some reason the tires seem to build up air pressure in hot weather I guess due to heat building within the tire.

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Kevin Gowdy aka Kagey 1999 Polaris Magnum 500