Ranger 900 Grenades Belt

[Chris]

Some of you might have seen this pic on my Facebook page. Here is the whole story:



A couple of months ago, I installed a Dirty Dawg Clutch (DDP) clutch kit into my 2015 Polaris Ranger 900 XP. I installed the clutch to gain back the small decrease in performance I noticed when I added 27" Maxxis Bighorn tires. I was also eager to get rid of the junky OEM TEAM Rapid Reaction secondary with which Polaris equips most of their Ranger 900 machines. The Rapid Reaction secondary is an inexpensive two piece pulley that is known to cause a jerky slow speed engagement of the belt.

Here is a pic of the OEM Rapid Reaction secondary:


The DDP clutch kit came with a new primary spring, new adjustable flyweights setup for my riding style and tire size, a new TEAM TIED secondary with engine braking helix and spring. The clutch kit costs me $650.

Take a look at the new weights:


Notice the new secondary:


Everything was great. The new clutch re-calibrated my shift out back to around 6600RPM, it made High Range more usable on trail, took away the jerkiness in starting off in High Range, and it added engine braking to my Ranger which previously had none.

I run my stuff hard. I run it in deep creek and river crossings. I drive in the river with water up to the bottom of the steering wheel. I'm properly snorkled with a Highlifter brand snorkel they market as "Diver Down" snorkels.



I also use my Ranger 900 for utility. I use it to tend the cattle and to hunt. I use my Ranger to travel between our family ranch properties that is separated by about 15 miles of back road county blacktop. Numerous times I used my built Rhino 700 with 734cc top end, ported head, and Muzzys to scoot my 30" Bighorns to 60MPH for the trip. I recently took my Ranger on this little road trip with poor results.

My Ranger 900 lost the belt at about 10 miles. I was hauling ass, wide open at the Ranges 61MPH governed top speed for the majority of the trip.

I was cruising along at 6200RPM, and suddenly a loud noise shook the Ranger. It sounded sickening. The noise was similar to someone filling a metal coffee can with ball bearings and shaking it violently. My immediate thought was that I threw a rod in the engine or the transmission grenaded.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw smoke billowing out of my CVT exhaust snorkel. Dozens of belt pieces were in the bed of the Ranger, and others were still spewing from the 1.5" piping. I coasted for a while shocked that my belt had just blown. It was a $160 Polaris belt. It had less than 100 miles on it.



Broken pieces of belt:


Broken down, I coasted to the side of the county road. As the Ranger slowed to a stop on the shoulder I grabbed my cell phone and called my mom to bring my pickup and a strap to tow the Ranger back to the barn.



I pulled the CVT cover off and found a mess. The belt failed when the engine was turning over 6000RPM. It exploded in spectacular fashion. It damaged the CVT outer cover, the gasket, and wrapped handfuls of cord around the clutches. Removing the tangles of cord was tedious and meant pulling the clutches. I don't belive this would have been a trail-side repair without a lot of tools and at least an hour or more of downtime.



My theory is that the belt failed not from poor clutching. The belt failed from improper CVT cooling. My hypothesis is the 1.5" snorkels were insufficiently sized for an extended high speed run with 95F temperatures. The belt got hot, delaminated, and violently exploded.

I have since cleaned up the mess and replaced the damaged parts. I removed the snorkels until I can come up with a better solution to cool the CVT for high speed jaunts.



I hope you enjoyed my story!

[Yotehunter66]

Can you add add a fan to the intake for the cvt!? I know on my can am they do not recommend riding at constant speeds in high gear. I vary my speeds, in high, so not to build up excessive heat on the belt.

[Timmi]

2" snorks and a cvt blower
and one of these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/231674559318...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

[Cleang35]

I but a bilge fan in series with my cvt exhaust snorkel on my Viking. Works good keeping it cool


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[Snorider]

Sorry to hear about that. It would be interesting to see what a blower in-line would do.

Didn't you have your rhino snorkeled as well? What are some of the differences in-between snorkel kits? Or were they both 1-1/2?

Because 1-1/2 seems small. That looks like a P85 primary and the team tied is an awesome clutch, but those 2 build heat in freezing temps under hard use, let alone 95 degrees. But they also work fantastic.

I would love to see the differences in temps a inch and a half with a blower motor makes vs no blower motor. And then 2 inch would be even cooler temps, but that might not fit without doing some serious cutting.

[madmax 1]

I think I would install a cvt temp guage as well so you could monitor the temps also, I think I saw them on the high lifter site

[WV Hot Rod Rhino]

i guess i need to work on that one too!!..lol