PeterGriffin
New member
Obligatory first day/bone stock/driveway pic! Delivered on Wednesday and first ride was yesterday for around an hour…
My apologies in advance for the TLDR first post!
My fifth UTV and third Polaris. First machine was a ‘12 RZR 800 S which was an excellent, very solid machine and a great start to the extensive off roading opportunities here all over Arizona. Second machine was a ‘15 RZR XP-4 1000 which must have been made on a Friday afternoon of a 3-day weekend. It was junk from Jump Street and spent more time in the shop than my garage and arguably should have been a lemon/buy back. Electrical gremlins of every variety, devouring brand new belts (because the dealer never dealt with the clutch/sheaves…just put on a new belt and called it good), etc. I could not get rid of it fast enough…and along came the Canned Ham Maverick X3s…
I bought the first X3 DS my local dealer had for sale in ‘17. They got it on a Wednesday, uncrated it and set it up for display on Thursday and parked it our front Friday, which was the first time I saw it…and promptly bought in on Saturday. I was so completely done with the RZR and Polaris “experience” that I literally walked away from a $5K “loyalty” rebate I would have gotten from Polaris if I bought a leftover RZR (Turbo) and bought the X3 instead.
My X3 was an incredible machine. I usually hesitate from buying first model year products but I was more than ready to move on from Polaris/RZR. My dealer was actually a little nervous and despite pushing that machine hard and on a regular basis the only issue I ever had was broken front sway bar link. That’s it. Ran like a Swiss watch and took a high speed desert beating like a champ…and low speed/rock crawling/technical trails equally so. I sold it for top dollar and had people fighting and trying to outbid each other for it, first time I had that problem!
When the 4-seat “MAX” X3 came out I had to have one of those, so I ended up with their flagship model of that in ‘20, the X3 Max RS Turbo RR…man does Can Am NOT know how to name their machines…that’s just ridiculous.
Likewise it was an incredible machine, just with significantly more power and seating for 4. I modified it modestly (32s wheels/tires, etc.) and during COVID when they became unobtanium and were going for $40-50K USED I sold it to a longtime friend of mine, who despite expecting to pay those prices did not, because I wasn’t going to gouge a lifelong friend…
The main impetus for selling it was the beating I was taking when driving off-road. I just had my EIGHTH back surgery (and have an eight level thoracic and lumbar fusion) and a two hour rip would turn into two days of me being far more banged up than I was comfortable with.
So we were without an UTV for about 3 years. I heard about the Xpeditions and initially completely discounted them (no pun intended) because of the exorbitant pricing. Where I live in AZ the summertime temps get well into the 100-teens and we typically have over 100 days of 100 degree or higher temps. In other words, it gets hot AF here! I ride year round (the “winters” are insane, except for the frigging snowbirds which infest this place and ruin it for the year round residents) and from an environmental standpoint you get really hammered by the elements/sun exposure.
We looked at the General previously and while we liked the looks, etc. an enclosed cab around here is like driving around in a Dutch oven so it wasn’t an option.
Along comes the Xpedition with full HVAC and now we’re talking! We’ve owned a number of JK/JL/JT Jeeps, including most recently a Gladiator Mojave so we were interested in how they compare. There’s NO shortage of Xpedition versus Jeep comparisons on YouTube and I was especially keen on the speed that the Xpedition can carry through trails that Jeeps effectively have to crawl on. I knew the XPedition was not going to shred like the X3s did, but I kept hearing that they were more of a hybrid of utility and sport UTVs in the suspension/performance department.
With the first test ride out of the way I can definitely agree with that! We have a wash “road” right in back of my house (I literally live on the desert; there’s no houses in back of me and my back wall has a sliding gate into the desert) that I like to do “high” speed test runs down to see how the suspension handles it.
My ‘17 Wrangler Rubicon (with AEV suspension) would do about 15 MPH before it started pogo sticking over the whoops and knocking the filings out of your teeth. The X3 would float through it doing nearly 70 (it could like go even faster but I didn’t want to run out of talent). My old RZR 800S could do 25-30 quite comfortably, but its tiny wheelbase caught up to it quickly. The XP-4 1000 (when it wasn’t in the shop) could go faster than that and the longer wheelbase really helped soak up the whoops…
Yesterday as I finishing up our first ride and returning home via the wash “road” I discovered quite quickly that it was having no issue at all as I slowly increased speed. During the test ride I found the suspension to be significantly better than what I was honestly expecting. I knew it would be better than a Jeep or utility UTV but it was much more so. 25 MPH quickly went to 30, then to 35 where it was still performing exceptionally without a hint of (rear) unloading/pogo sticking. I decided not to push it any faster but I’d imagine it’d handle 40 easily and 45 would likely be my limit of comfort with a safety margin in mind.
Another point worth making is the HVAC performance. The Ride Command showed an exterior temp of 101 and while that’s hardly the limit of what we’ll encounter here next summer, just having the A/C on its first fan setting was more than enough to keep us quite comfortable. We’re going to do black-out ceramic tint shortly which will only help with the 100-teen temps we’ll experience. The seats were very comfortable and my back wasn’t in any more pain than it was when we started. I’m a music guy and loved the stereo but since my wife was with me and we haven’t “buggied” off-road in years we were much more interested in talking about the ride as we experienced it.
People who complain about the interior noise are…ridiculous. Try riding in an open “sport” machine like an X3 and get back to me! I know there were significant improvements in interior noise levels over the ‘24 model year too. We may put in a rear window/divider which would likely cut down on interior noise even further and I have been looking at a “quiet” muffler too.
That does, however, bring up a negative observation (besides the price…which nearly everyone takes issue with and for good reason)…the “power”, or lack thereof.
I would NOT say that 114 HP (rated at the crank) anemic. However a machine of this size weight could definitely make do with a solid jump in HP which I can see happening a few model years in the future. In the interim, in addition to the quiet muffler (which claims small power gains…of course, but no dyno sheet to go with it) I’m going to do an ECU and clutch tune. If you’ve never done a proper clutch tune on an UTV I cannot overstate the massive difference it makes, particularly if you’ve changed your tire size (which I also plan to do and go with Method wheels and 32s).
If that doesn’t do the trick I’ll consider Pro EFI’s turbo kit…!
