rob

Me and my buddies are stumped on this one. I'm running a 2002 Polaris XC SP 600 with about 3200 miles on it. We clean the exhaust valves every year, cleaned the carb last year and do general maintenance every year.

I took the sled up to Quebec for a couple of days and rode those long, flat, groomed trails without issue.

The next weekend we were in a powdery Pitt and I started having issues. We rode pretty hard on powdery trails all morning having a blast in the freshly fallen snow. As soon as we headed out on one of the lakes, she started to bog. I could not give full throttle without it bogging and could only achieve about 40 mph crossing the lake. Granted the snow was a little deep, but she was just not running right.

I kept the hammer down just to get across and stopped when we reached shore. After puzzling with the boys for a few minutes as to what was wrong, we headed out and the sled ran fine. This scenario repeated a few times for the rest of the weekend. It seemed that when climbing a decent hill or really getting on it, the sled would bog. After stopping and letting her cool, I would be ok.

Is it the powder getting into a cracked electrical something or is that just coincidence? I mentioned that we were in Quebec on flat non-powdery trails thinking that was the only difference b/t one weekend without problems and the next with all the bogging.

Could it be some kind of ignition module that is on the fritz? My buddy ran continuity and voltages and says they are all to spec but I don't know what that means since the sled is not running under load or wet.

Any ideas would be welcome. I'm bummed that I might have to head out next year with a spurious problem under the hood. I'd love to fix or change something that I can point to as the culprit. However, I know from software debugging that the hardest bugs to fix are the ones that you cannot reproduce consistently.

Tx for any ideas and help.
Dom

_{I think Rob had issues with that vintage XC ingesting snow around the headlight when riding in powder or following too close to a sled in front on him. He had a fix that involved a rubber gasket around the headlight /hood area. Maybe shoot him a PM as I don't think he frequents here much anymore.}