Phazer Mountain is really tippy! Need suspension advice!

[mountainphazer]

Hi,

I just posted this over in the general suspension forum, but thought it would be good to hear from Phazer owners! I just bought a 08 Phazer Mountain and am having problems with the handling. I find that when I turn the skis all the way to the left or right the inside ski comes off the ground and the sled tips to the opposite side even at slow speeds. If there is even a little bit of angle on the ground the sled will nearly tip over, and will tip if I don't stand on the inside running board. Tonight I was packing down an area for my kids on flat ground. Just turning hard left at less than 5mph the sled tipped 45 degrees to the right in a foot of powder. If I try to go up a hill the sled really fights me if I don't follow the natural angle. I'm hoping the forum has some suggestions for the suspension setup. The strap is in the 2nd hole (2nd longest out of 4 settings) from the top and I attached a picture of the front. I believe everything is stock other than the skis which are Simmons Flexi. I'm 150 lbs. I had a Phazer FX prior and it wasn't nearly as tippy. I really appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks all!

 

[DigitalFusion]

the FX has a much wider ski stance, which will have a big impact on stability. The mountain sleds have a narrower stance to make it easier to carve around in the powder. Im not sure what your primary riding conditions are (you dont have location listed in profile, its a site requirement BTW).

If you dont plan on boondockin' out in the deep stuff, you can move the spindles to the outside spacers and/or look into some GT/FX control arms to widen the stance. What settings are your front shocks at? I cant tell from the picture

 

[Colorado Yamaha]

We have 2 new MTX's in the fleet and last weekend we were testing set-ups. The "stable sled" has the widest ski setting and the shocks cranked up a bit from soft. The "boondocker" is middle width and softest setting. Both riders are 130 lbs. and have stock ski's. Both do turn over really easy, you need little to no input to have them turn on a dime. I hope to change to Floats and see what that does for the handling. We did not get any ski turn-up like you noted and had a lot of fresh snow. Derek

 

[CJW]

Schmidt bros has a sway bar for your sled that takes all the tippy feeling out of it. Have had one on my wifes MTN lite for 4 years now. Well worth it.

 

[liketoride2]

I have an 08 Phazer that is turbocharged and has a 151 inch track. I also was concerned with the tippiness of the sled, especially when boon docking in powder.

There were three things I did that have improved this somewhat, this needing to be done on a restricted budget. These were:

Front shocks (stock) set on maximum preload.
Skis stance set in the widest position.
The 10 inch wide Simmons skis.

This cost me very little as I already had the skis and only had to buy mounting brackets for the Phazer. The improvement is significant, both on setup snow and powder.

I would suspect that changing to longer A Arms and an after market anti-sway bar would result in further improvement but would be quite expensive and beyond my budget, especially if the shocks would need to be changed because of the longer A Arms (I don't know if they would). I priced the A Arms (new) and they were a lot of $. I have wondered if a skilled welder could strengthen the stock anti-sway bar but haven't investigated that possibility as of yet.

A year or so ago there was an extensive thread on this exact subject. If you haven't already done so you might try a search for it.

Mike
Idaho

 

[stingray719]

Hi,

I just posted this over in the general suspension forum, but thought it would be good to hear from Phazer owners! I just bought a 08 Phazer Mountain and am having problems with the handling. I find that when I turn the skis all the way to the left or right the inside ski comes off the ground and the sled tips to the opposite side even at slow speeds. If there is even a little bit of angle on the ground the sled will nearly tip over, and will tip if I don't stand on the inside running board. Tonight I was packing down an area for my kids on flat ground. Just turning hard left at less than 5mph the sled tipped 45 degrees to the right in a foot of powder. If I try to go up a hill the sled really fights me if I don't follow the natural angle. I'm hoping the forum has some suggestions for the suspension setup. The strap is in the 2nd hole (2nd longest out of 4 settings) from the top and I attached a picture of the front. I believe everything is stock other than the skis which are Simmons Flexi. I'm 150 lbs. I had a Phazer FX prior and it wasn't nearly as tippy. I really appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks all!

Yamaha settings are more touchy than other sleds. You can go to great to unrideable with a minimum of settings change. I would make all your settings to mid range and try it. One other thing, has anybody put drop brackets on this sled? Raising the back puts alot of ski pressure on and will make it VERY unstable (mine had those when I bought it) With the drop brackets on (raising back) I added fox floats and rolled it three times on the road trying to get back to truck.....lol. Brackets are gone now.....

Also, back of skid set stiff and front of skid set soft can cause exra ski pressure and cause some of what you describe.

I made probably a dozen adjustments to get the girlfriends Phazer where she likes it and along the way a couple of changes made it spooky to take down a road with ruts. Very stable now though.