DKA Motorsports RZR170

[tribal4krawler]

I figured for shits and giggles I would split up the racecars that we campaign in the TexPlex UTV series into their own little build threads, in case anyone's ever interested in reading more about a specific car. If you don't already know, we currently have a 2017 Polaris RZR Turbo XP, a 2018 Polaris RS1, and a 2009 Polaris RZR170. This thread will focus on our RZR 170, what we started with, what we've broken/modified, etc.

We purchased the car in October of 2020, from basically a friend of a friend out in California who had raced it primarily in the desert as her family mostly was involved in baja racing, san felipe, etc. It came with a Benchmark prepped 204cc motor, transmission beefed up with cognito parts, Factory UTV long travel swing arm, Lonestar Racing front long travel, race cage, doors, etc. My 9 year old step daughter was the one who initially showed interest in racing, of course I'd already been racing Ultra4, Dirt Riot, Renegades, and some TDRA but at this stage she was very interested in checking out the racing scene. The car came to us Pink. Very pink, with rainbow zebra stripes. Definitely not any of our styles, but it sure was noticeable. lol. These pictures are from the first 2 or 3 races she was in, we didn't see any breakage or serious issues right away.

 

[tribal4krawler]

After 2 races, everything was still looking good. The car wasn't particularly fast, but then again Lorelei was brand new and I didn't really expect much. We pulled the car out of the trailer after a race, and did an oil change, and fired it up, or tried to. No matter what I did, it would not start. Tried a new ignition, new fuel pump, new spark plugs, nothing. Finally thought to check compression, and there was nothing at all. After some inspecting, we realized one of the valves had broken. After some researching I ordered a new high compression head and had my buddies at 3P Offroad put it all back together. What do you know, fired right up after that. Coming into 2021 and the start of the Texplex UTV series, Lorelei was determined to get faster and we spent several practice days at the track getting her more comfortable. After one of the practice days we noticed the Factory UTV swingarm had cracked in several places, and if i hadn't caught it could have been real bad if it'd completely let go during a race. This is a very common failure on these swingarms, and my buddy Dave at Brave Motorsports was kind enough to tig weld the cracks and whip up some gusset pieces to reinforce the swingarm. We also went through and replaced the heims on the swing arm as they were getting pretty worn.

I also decided to make a change in gearing as i felt like the car was taking forever to get up to speed. Lorelei immediately was much faster in the turns after that.

 

[tribal4krawler]

Lorelei completed the first two races of the '21 season before discovering Equestrian riding and deciding to focus instead on that and let Logan (my 8 yr old) and Landon (7 year old stepson) take turns and see if they enjoyed racing the RZR170. It was a pretty last second decision to swap drivers from Lorelei to Logan, and I spraybombed the whole car black without any prep and slapped some gold stickers on it. Logan had not been able to get any seat time in the car up to this point, so I was pretty nervous that he might make some poor decisions. Luckily, he surprised us all and for once exactly followed all directions and advice.

I also immediately realized that the car was nowhere near as slow as I'd originally thought, with Logan and his willingness to hold the throttle to the floorboard bettered our laptimes by nearly 30 seconds. Logan was hooked, and all he wanted to talk about was racing, and when he could race next.

 

[tribal4krawler]

Next up was Landon's turn, and this little guy by far has 100s more hours of playing Iracing, BeamNG, MudRunner, etc. Any game involving a steering wheel, he's in. We spent a little sweat equity actually stripping and prepping the rzr body for paint (still didn't help much) and painted the whole thing gold. This is the permanent color of what the RZR will be.

As expected, Landon did great driving, and also took a nasty kick in a rut which sent him off an embankment into a full roll sideways back onto his tires before continuing on and finishing his race. After watching the two boys race, I realized that the carb was really holding back the performance of the 204, with a top speed of around 39-41 MPH where the kid who dominates the class is running in the 50s. I don't think we have enough motor for 50s, but if we can get into the high 40s it'll at least be close. We're currently running a flat slide carb, which from all accounts is absolutely the WRONG thing to have for our combination. Stay tuned for our experiences changing out carb setups and hopefully finding that elusive MPH

 

[tribal4krawler]

So just to update: I changed out the carb, put a fresh fuel pump on it, and spark plug and it’s running MUCH better than it ever has since we’ve owned it. It’s still not “fast” IMO, and I very well might go up to a 15 front sprocket to see if we can get more MPH out of it. Regardless, I seriously doubt we’ll ever get the 50+ mph that we need to compete with the 60k CarrOne rzr that’s in our class. If we can get into the mid 40s maybe we can get him nervous and mess him up. 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️

 

[redneckK20s]

Very cool to see one of these race prepped. I work at a Polaris dealer and stock they are little more than a plastic covered cheap go-kart. I'm amazed how much performance you've already got out of it. Looks like a lot of fun for the kiddos.

 

[tribal4krawler]

redneckK20s theyre definitely Chinese junk with polaris stickers from the factory. We’ve had excellent luck so far with keeping the car alive, unfortunately my dumb butt forgot the 15 front sprocket at home and so we weren’t able to get the MPH we needed to be competitive. Next round, we’ll definitely have the 15/30 on - we still won’t have the power to compete with the big money cars but at least we’ll make them work for it.

 

[tribal4krawler]

decided to tear the clutch cover back off and we realized the clutch had broken and was tearing itself apart. That’s the issue we’ve been having I’m pretty sure. So I bought a whole new clutch kit from Gy6store.com (huge props to them for overnighting to me) and Logan and I installed everything. Also put some fresh Blud 10/50 oil in, as well as the 15 tooth front sprocket. We have a red 1500 spring in it now so we’ve made quite a few changes all at once, and we’ll see how it all goes.

 

[ridered3]

It's so awesome how the whole family has the racing bug in various shapes or forms!

 

[jhama78]

Awesome thread, following along.

 

[Bebop]

tribal4krawler
Found you the perfect tow rig to put 2 SXS and tow your big trailer with 2 more in it:

One of a kind car carrier / chase truck

2007 c5500 car carrier / chase truck, I have used this truck to carry two class ten cars , works really well for 2 sxs with room to spare . The beauty of this truck is you can transport two cars with ...click to see more of this listing

classifieds.race-dezert.com

 

[tribal4krawler]

tribal4krawler
Found you the perfect tow rig to put 2 SXS and tow your big trailer with 2 more in it:

One of a kind car carrier / chase truck

2007 c5500 car carrier / chase truck, I have used this truck to carry two class ten cars , works really well for 2 sxs with room to spare . The beauty of this truck is you can transport two cars with ...click to see more of this listing

classifieds.race-dezert.com

Haha that’s rad!!!

 

[tribal4krawler]

So to recap from the last 2 races - round 6 at TexPlex had Landon our 7 year old driving. Landon hasn’t gotten to drive much in a couple of months, and we’ve made a lot of changes so he was a little timid at first.

During his race, he was going to pass someone on the outside of a turn and ended up clipping their driver rear tire and going airborne. He lawndarted and pirouetted before rolling over, but luckily safety crew was nearby and got him uprighted. Unfortunately it broke the steering box when he lawndarted the car.

Kind of hard to tell but you can see where the tie rods attach in the middle, there’s a stud that snapped off. Luckily our friends with Dumford Racing were already at MidAmerica and had a spare steering box. We got up there and quickly swapped out the box. Jariel definitely saved that race for us. For the Visions Offroad race we had our 9 year old Logan behind the wheel, and he was pretty excited.

He went out for practice, passed a bunch of cars and was feeling good. Heat 1 came up, and almost immediately he barrel rolls the car after turning too sharp on a tight right hander. I’m talking to him on comms telling him to stay in the car, rescue is coming, but I see him pop out of the car and take his helmet off. I was maybe a couple hundred yards away so I run over and ask if he’s hurt or if the cars broken and he said nope, but that was crazy. I tell him to get back in the car and finish out the heat, and he does. In the main he just didn’t have enough speed and he was also being overly cautious from rolling over earlier (his first real rollover) but he still finished 10 out of 21 in RZR Mod. It’s crazy how reliable this little car has been, but I’m thinking about starting over with another car. This one would be super competitive in any series that doesn’t have all the west coast cheaters or huge money cars.

 

[redneckK20s]

Not to thread hijack but did you see the RZR 200 yet? Pretty cool.

 

[tribal4krawler]

Not to thread hijack but did you see the RZR 200 yet? Pretty cool.

Funny that you mention that, because I just put my preorder for the first one in Houston. Should arrive in November we’re guessing.

 

[SLOWPOKE693]

These SxS racing series need to come up with some sensible and easily enforceable rules for the amature classes if they want to keep people in the amature classes interested in racing. The "outspend the next guy to stay ahead" stuff sucks for everyone except the rich folks with the way the current rules are written.

My take on amature rules would be:

-Minimum weight rule

-No long travel or "wide" suspensions allowed

-Factory equipped shocks only (unlimited shock mods allowed to factory shocks)

-Factory chassis, and suspension mounting points only.

-External engine mods & tunes only (I.E. Exhaust,
Intake and ECU tuning allowed on N/A and Turbo cars.) Stock turbos on factory equipped cars and no bolt on turbo kits allowed in amature Turbo classes, Expert Turbo class being the exception. You want to race a turbo car, buy one that came factory with a turbo on it. Period

-Pump Gas only. No E85 or race fuel allowed.


You want to run a big motor on race fuel with a long travel suspension with million dollar shocks on it then do it in the Expert and Pro classes.

 

[SLOWPOKE693]

I'd also like to see more safety rules concerning cages. Stock cages should not be allowed in any class and neither should opening doors. There should also be a mandatory A pillar vertical support bar rule. Seeing Levi's cage caved in after last race wasn't a great feeling. I'm glad that kid is OK, it looked bad from my view of the crash.

 

[665.0coupe]

-Factory equipped shocks only (unlimited shock mods allowed to factory shocks)

I see this as a slippery slope. In the long run it may be easier and cheaper to allow guys to run aftermarket shocks than make them trick out the factory shocks.

The local dirt track guys I use to help had a rule that they had to run a mini spool in a 9". The next class up could run a full spool. The sanctioning body said the rule was because a mini spool was cheaper and the lower class was an entry class. Now the upper class rules have changed to allow them to run a quick change rear and they are selling off all of their third members. The lower class guys can't buy the cheap used parts because they have full spools.

I use to follow an amateur road race series that required the cars to run stock T-5 transmissions because they were cheaper than an aftermarket 5 speed. The T-5 wouldn't hold up and guys would go through 3-5 transmission per year. It would have been cheaper to allow them to use the aftermarket trans that would last a whole year.

 

[tribal4krawler]

In my opinion allowing aftermarket mods - IE “buying” speed is good for the vendors, and for the sport. The vendors are often the ones sponsoring the races and pouring money in so locking down the classes to where nobody spends money so poor people can compete doesn’t benefit anybody but the poors. Racing is, and always will be for people that either have disposable income or credit cards.

 

[SLOWPOKE693]

In my opinion allowing aftermarket mods - IE “buying” speed is good for the vendors, and for the sport. The vendors are often the ones sponsoring the races and pouring money in so locking down the classes to where nobody spends money so poor people can compete doesn’t benefit anybody but the poors. Racing is, and always will be for people that either have disposable income or credit cards.

So every race series with rules is fucking the aftermarket and its series sponsors? I don't think so.....

 

[SLOWPOKE693]

The only thing "no rules" is good for is letting sub-par teams with lots of disposable income outspend the competition to stay ahead.

 

[tribal4krawler]

Got the billet steering box rebuilt with the new output shaft and bearings, really wasn’t too big of a deal. Also found a pretty bent heim on one of the front A-arms. Pretty much good to go for next weekend.