Ride Impressions
“I was a passenger for the first part of the ride,” he said. “Going down the trail at slow speeds we adjusted the suspension from Comfort to Sport and Firm. The bumps where small chatter but enough to move your body around in the seat. In the Comfort setting it was very plush with little input from the trail to my body. In Sport mode I could feel lots of input from the trail to my body. In full stiff mode it was almost unbearable with how stiff it felt. So my first impression was ‘wow,’ this really works to tune from the cockpit with flip of a switch for these smaller, low-speed bumps. As the speeds got faster I noticed I was tensing up as we hit big moguls and washouts on the trail. It took a few miles and bumps to realize I was getting tensed up for no reason because the suspension would soak up bumps and not throw the vehicle around and your body in the seat.”
When Dahlgren says it was unbearable, he wasn’t kidding. It was brutal to ride in that setting. So we flipped the switch and changed our ride setting. In other vehicles, we might have just endured the ride because the trail conditions changed not too long after that and we wouldn’t have wanted to stop and change the shock settings manually.
Dahlgren said, “The trade-off with a clicker-style suspension vs. the Dynamix system is it is hands-down way easier to tune; no need to stop and adjust and hope the trail doesn’t change and you guessed the correct position of the clickers.”
The Dynamix system has six Axis IMU (Inertia Measurement Unit): three axis accelerometer and three axis gyro. The system will adjust from full soft to full stiff at 50 mph in about 5/8 of a revolution of the tires.
No Body Roll
While all that is impressive enough, what is equally impressive is the body roll—or lack thereof—on the RZR Dynamix. “We rode the RZR Dynamix Turbo around high speed corners and it was very impressive how the body roll was controlled,” Dahlgren said. “The RZR was very flat in every corner we took during the day, including smooth ones or ones with big holes.”
Dynamix was adjusting for the riding conditions all the time so when we were cornering, it would stiffen up the shock on the right or left (depending on your direction of turning) side where it was collapsing. How much the shock stiffened up was dependent on how sharp the turn was. Again, you could watch the settings change on the cockpit display. Also, when you were accelerating or stopping, the shocks would firm up in the front or rear; front if you were stopping and rear if you were accelerating.
We really appreciated the lack of body roll, especially in the washes where the ruts were deep and worked against the vehicle. But the RZR felt stable even in the harshest of conditions.
Dahlgren added, “I would take this smart system over a suspension with more travel any day due to how you hit various bumps and use the brakes. The Dynamix system would adjust the valving so all the travel was not used up before the bump would happen. I noticed many times that day when the driver hit the brakes that the front end did not squat as much as I was used to. The IMU reads all the inputs and does the adjusting quickly and accurately, so the ride is very compliant and the bump event does not bottom the suspension out. While driving down the trail and various speeds the ride was very nice, I enjoyed how the system would compensate for the trail and make it smooth all the time.
“Smart travel is better than more travel.”
At the time RZR Dynamix was first introduced, it was only available on the premium, two-seat RZR XP Turbo EPS model. Since then, however, the 72-inch Polaris RZR XP Turbo S has been unleased and it too has Dynamix.
The RZR XP Turbo Dynamix edition has an MSRP of $25,999 while the RZR XP Turbo S is $27,499.
