If you’ve kept pace with the first two articles of the Fab 5 Shootout, you’ll know that these vehicles have been put through the nastiest mud and the best rock crawling in the country. If you ride in the mud or like playing on the rocks, make sure you get the last two issues: June/July and Aug/Sept ’08. It’s been our goal with this series of shootouts to provide the most comprehensive review of all 5 manufacturers’ vehicles in every type of terrain that our readers ride in: Mud, Rocks, Dunes, and Desert. Our contenders have been the Yamaha Rhino, Polaris RZR, Arctic Cat Prowler, Kawasaki Teryx, and Polaris Ranger XP.
To continue our quest to provide you the best possible unbiased information on these SxS/UTVs, we’ve headed to one of the most popular destinations in the West: the Buttercup sand dunes in California. If you’ve never been, Buttercup is on the south side of the famous Glamis Dunes Recreation Area. Although the dunes aren’t the prettiest riding in the country, the dunes have been one of the most popular riding destinations since the early days of off highway recreation. There’s something fascinating about carving the faces of 500’ high walls of sand or straining your engine and drive train attempting to climb one of them. And, on this note, the dunes provide a riding experience like nothing else. The terrain ranges from sandy washes to wind rippled hard pack to the roughest whoops you can imagine. This doesn’t include the endless carving, jumping, and climbing you can do on some of the largest sand hills you’ve ever seen. And, we had our work cut out for us, because we knew it was going to be 110+ degrees by noon, not to mention the extreme strain the soft sand of the dunes elicits on UTV CVT clutches.
So, we were up by 2:30 am, and out to the dunes by 4:00 am. We unloaded all the rigs, aired all the tires to 6 psi, and were off before sunrise. On our last two tests, we set the shocks up to gain max clearance. For this test, we set them up as they come from the factory. This lowered all the vehicles to the normal ride height to help with carving and cornering in the deep sand. As with our other two tests in the mud and rocks, we’ve got 3 outside drivers with a varying background with these vehicles to help provide our unbiased results. Steve Chase from Makin’ Trax Suspension has a vast background in desert racing and produces shocks specifically for the UTV market. And, for our other two drivers, James Hill and John Pacheco joined us from Riot Fab. James is ranked #1 in points in the M4SX Short Course UTV Racing series in CA, and both John and James own Riot Fab. They design and build race UTVs, buggies, or pretty much anything you’d like custom fabricated. The two remaining drivers were Troy and I. Luckily, we didn’t have anyone concerned about their weights in this group, so here are our stats to give you an idea of why each driver favors a particular machine once we get into the review.
DRIVER STATS: James: 6’ – 180 lbs, John: 5’7” – 160 lbs, Steve: 5’11” – 250 lbs, Troy: 6’3” – 220 lbs, Chris: 6’2” – 230 lbs
To explain, we tested 4 different areas while at the dunes: hill climbing, whoops, acceleration, and carving bowls. Overall, the testing has been performed in the same way we’ve done the previous ones. Every driver got a chance to drive each vehicle for each test. After each run, I’d pull each driver away to have them explain what their thoughts were on the vehicle. We did this 5 times/test and compiled the results at the end. So, hopefully, by the time this test is done you can decide for your type of dune riding which vehicle would best suit your needs.
Hill Climb
To get started, we did our hill climb test first. We picked the steepest and longest hill we could find to do our test. Our goal wasn’t to have anyone crest the top, because we knew it would be a dangerous razorback due to the lack of people out at the dunes. So, what we wanted to find out is two things: Which vehicle made it the farthest, and which one went up to its stopping point the fastest. Everyone was instructed to go as far as they could or just short of the top if they made it that far in high 4wd locked front and rear. Here are the results.
Overall, if hill climbing is one of your favorite things to do, you can easily see which ones might be a good base to start from. Some of the things we noticed made the biggest difference for this test were engine cc’s, tire choice, and vehicle weight. The RZR has the largest motor and the lightest weight, which is obviously a good combination here. The Prowler doesn’t have the largest motor, 3rd lightest weight, but they use very lightweight Goodyear MTRs that perform fantastic in the sand. The Teryx has the second largest motor, is the heaviest of the bunch, yet it performed 3rd overall in the hill climb. The Rhino is the second lightest also with a 700 cc motor, yet it performed 4th overall. The Ranger is the second heaviest UTV of the test with the 700 motor and lowest gearing, which makes sense why it doesn’t like to climb hills in the sand.
For our second test, we picked a section of whoops that on the way out were roughly 6”-1’ tall, and on the way back were 1’-1.5’ tall. Of course, we’d love to say that the stock suspensions of these machines soak up the largest whoops we could find, but that’s not the case, unfortunately. During this test, it was a little unnerving, because everyone was instructed to hit the whoops wide open until the vehicle couldn’t handle it and it became unsafe. If you’ve never run whoops before, it’s definitely a scary thing when the best way to run them is as fast as you can muster up the courage. When you feel like letting off, put your foot into it and hold on. Here are the results from the testing done in the whoops.
Because we have multiple tests within the dune test, we’re not going to do the star ratings till the very end. One thing that everyone noticed when driving the RZR is how responsive it is when you get out of control in the big whoops. Nearly everyone commented that you can just let off and stand back in it to correct it from bucking up or kicking to one side or the other. Plus, we all realized that we were going quite a bit faster than the other machines through the same section of whoops before getting out of control. The key to the RZR running the whoops nice and flat is getting in and out of the throttle at the precise times to maintain a nice flat ride.
In the whoops, the Prowler performed above average. The challenge with this test more so than any of the previous tests is that each driver had differing opinions to the point that it’s hard to summarize the results as easy as the previous tests. The best I can tell from everyone’s comments is that the Prowler was one of the vehicles that surprised the majority of drivers. In the whoops, the suspension, for the most part, did its job surprisingly well. The major complaint that everyone had was not feeling safe with just the lap belt holding you in place. Throw some harnesses or a 3-point stock seat belt from Arctic Cat, and when the going gets rough like running the whoops, I’m sure our confidence levels would go up even more. The Prowler has a tendency to make you push it to its limits by instilling confidence in your driving. Overall, in the whoops, it handles 90% of what most people will do with ease.
And, this brings me to a good point. Keep in mind that we’re pushing these vehicles to the limit with our testing, especially in the whoops section. From our experience, most people don’t run the whoops wide open, especially in a stock vehicle. But, for the purposes of having a baseline to test the vehicles, we’ve pushed them to the limit, then backed off and kept it under control by feathering the throttle at the precise times.
In the whoops, the Rhino performed middle of the road. When driven regularly, it handles everything perfectly. When pushed to the limits, it would buck a little more than desired until you let off the gas and stand back into it at the precise times to level it out. The g-out, it definitely bottomed out but didn’t jar you to death. The small whoops were barely felt by the driver. When hitting the big whoops, I’m not sure if it was the inability to ride on the top of the whoops due to a slight lack of power or just that the shocks couldn’t quite keep up, but it bucked a little more than desired. Overall, if taken at the slower speed or whoops less than 1’ tall, the Rhino does perfectly. Once the whoops get larger, it requires more throttle control and less speed to keep from getting out of control.
The Teryx handled above average in the whoops with its primary comment being that it felt very stable and planted to the ground. Even though it kicked a tad in the rear on the big whoops for some, everyone felt very confident to push it to its limits without feeling out of control. There were a few of us that were able to keep the throttle pinned through the big whoops and some that had to back off and feather the throttle to keep it nice and level. I think it was a matter of preference and comfort level, honestly. Overall, though, the Teryx and Prowler performed very similarly in the big whoops.
The Ranger performed slightly below average in the whoops. In the g-out, though, it handled the best probably due to the higher bed capacity and resulting spring pre-load in the rear suspension. Through the small whoops, it was perfect just like the rest. But, in the big whoops, I think primarily due to the carrying capacity, it definitely likes to be in the air. The back end doesn’t want to stay down, resulting in the need to get off the gas sooner than the rest and begin feathering the throttle. Once you get in the rhythm with the gas pedal, everything seemed fine, but the resulting speeds were slower than the rest of the pack. One thing we had to keep in mind is that the Ranger is the most utilitarian of the UTVs we’re testing with over double the weight carrying capacity for the bed.
Acceleration test
For the acceleration test, we found a relatively flat section of soft sand. We loaded the vehicles with James and Troy with one to watch the speed and the other to control the stopwatch. We wanted to make it long enough to get close to top speed but not too long to hit the rev limiter on any one machine. Here are the results:
So, if we were going to rank them from fastest to slowest, it would be the RZR, Prowler, Rhino, Teryx, and then the Ranger. This was an interesting test, because we all would have thought the Teryx would have been 2nd or 3rd due to its motor, but it seems to be the most affected by the soft sand.
Dune Driving
When it came to carving the dunes, we all swapped in and out of the vehicles to get a feel for each one, but we didn’t compile results from each driver on each machine. We wanted each driver to get a good feel for the machines just as if they were out in the dunes on their own personal UTV. We didn’t run the exact same course, but we put on numerous miles on each machine so we could compile an overall opinion. So, here’s the individual lasting impressions from each driver:
Riding the dunes is what we find most people do at the dunes. It’s not running whoops wide open or even hill climbing to the top of the largest hills. UTVs in stock form don’t do either of those great, but they do a fantastic job of providing a high fun factor when carving through the wide open bowls of sand. And, when doing this you’re really looking for how the vehicle steers, whether it has enough power to climb out of the bowls, and how stable it feels when turning. For this part of our testing, it was very hard to conclude a clear winner or one dominant vehicle. For stability, it hands down went to the Teryx. For the optimum combination of power and stability, that would go to the Prowler. For downright power and thrill factor, it would go to the RZR. If you want the middle of the road vehicle that didn’t excel or fault in any one area, it would be the Rhino. If you don’t dune more than a few times a year, and you need to haul stuff around your farm or house, it would be the Ranger. And on this note, the Ranger up to this point in the rocks and the mud has been a top performer. But, in the dunes, I think the combination of clutching, motor, and weight prevents it from being a good dune machine in stock form. But, on this same note, it never didn’t carve a bowl or make it out of one, either. It just does it a lot slower than the rest.
In conclusion, the dune test brought about a wide variety of opinions for each vehicle, making it hard to summarize. But, we believe that this is as accurate a representation of these machines in the dunes as you can get. Below, we’ve taken the key areas of riding the dunes and provided star ratings to summarize each vehicle’s characteristics. For steering/carving, it really boils down to whether it goes in the direction you point it and provide the proper amount of feedback to the driver. For example, when on a side hill, does it stick to your projected path or slide downward as you work yourself around the bowl. Power played a role in this, as well, obviously. Power response is simply whether the machine had any problems climbing hills, getting out of bowls, maintaining your track when carving around a bowl, etc. When summarizing the suspension characteristics of each machine, we took into account how it handled in the whoops, how it handles moderate g-outs, landings off of jumps, and the body roll when carving. For ergonomics, the main thing we took into account for this test was whether it was comfortable and how safe the drivers felt in the seat belts. The climbing category is simply how well it climbs up hills. Obviously power, tire choice, vehicle weight, and clutching all played a role in this category. For the last category, we felt that letting you know how stable the vehicle felt was important when traversing steep bowls or transitioning between bowls.
Overall, we hope that this test once again provides you with the necessary information to choose which vehicle would best suite your needs and driving style. Stay tuned as we finish out the next issue with our desert riding test and provide you a synopsis of all the tests combined.
