I know the pics all start to look the same after a while but since lots of pics mean lots of breaks I will post them up. Little wood is a lot of work for a lousy load but I suppose progress is progress. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I purchased the Polaris used and have very little previous experience with a side by side. I hauled a lot of wood off the steep ridge behind our house with it last year and it was well up to the task with a full load. It is a belt drive and can be a bit jumpy starting from a stop and decending a hill you have to feather the throttle to keep the belt engaged to get some slowing or free fall using the brake. I’ve got a quad and trailer that can get in some narrower places but since I’ve got the side by side I seldom use the quad for hauling wood. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
One thing to know about the Ranger is it gives off quite a bit of heat into the cab. We have very mild weather here and seldom gets too hot so isn’t an issue for me. I actually like that in the cooler months. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
They are solid machines. Polaris pretty much invented the CVT tranny for ATV/ sxs use. You don't need the biggest most powerful one either. That "little" 500 ranger can do a ton of work.
Yep, those side by sides are awful handy. And so nice for hauling wood on the farm where, I only haul maybe a mile to mile and a half at the most and usually much closer. I haul a half face cord at a time. And it's easy to reach in the bed and grab the splits, and stack them up.
I had one for a year. Bought it new and sold it almost new, I used it for a few times for rides and would always grab whatever firewood I found along the way. It didn't take much of a load to cause the suspension to sag and then I would be dragging bottom instead of just riding over stuff (ruts in road). A guy about 2 miles down the highway made sure everyone knew it was illegal to drive UTVs along the shoulder and many warnings were handed out. For me, it wasn't worth it to have something that I had to drive along the shoulder to get access to where I wanted, so I sold it to some L.P. native that was (still is) extremely glad to pick it up. It was a mid-size and I think it had somewhere around 60 miles on it. In addition to a hard roof, front and back windshield, I added a front trailer hitch receiver which made it ideal to launch the boat right on my property! The boat launching/retrieval was the best part of having it; by far the worst part was the low weight capacity of the "dump box". I had absolutely no issues with the starting and dependability of it what so ever. FWIW, if I was to grab another vehicle of this sort, it would be one of those Japanese mini-trucks.
Amazing how popular the side by sides are now. At our weekend place, you still some quads roll by, but now it's a lot of side by sides. I was at our local Stihl dealer picking up some parts for my saw and helmet. They also sell Polaris stuff. They had a few quads, but a ton of side by sides. The Ranger they had seemed priced right. As I got to looking into the Rzr's...holy smokes. $22k. They had some 4 seater side by side that MSRP'd for almost $30k.
That sux about the laws up there. They changed the laws in most of rural Wisconsin to allow ATV utv's to be allowed most any where. Even here in the southeastern area, towns that are semi rural are allowing ATV and sxs to drive right in town. Our friends we met through the ALS foundation live in town, a small edge of city and country area, but where they live it's all houses and businesses, no fields. As of early 2020, they passed a law allowing the off road machines to drive around on streets like they do up north. It's refreshing to be honest. I'm shocked that all of the UP doesn't allow off road vehicles to do this.
It is illegal on federal and/or state highways. There may be a short link along those highways from one trail to another, but thats it. I spoke with a state trooper and he said depending on how you're driving, personally, I wouldn't issue a ticket, but thats me.
