To get beat in your own backyard was a wake up call! By mid-February the Test Engineering Group would be racing two thinly disguised liquid cooled 340cc TX Starfire’s in the 340 modified class with success. This did not sit lightly with the brain trust in Roseau. Paul I-500 was claimed by John Deere with a new liquid cooled powered Liquidator. On the cross country circuit the Winnipeg to St. It was not a project for the backyard mechanic to install, but the factory race team competed with LQ engines for the first time that winter.
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What many did not know was that Polaris offered a liquid cooling kit to convert the 340 free air engine to a water jacket. On the SnoPro circuit, Polaris was busy evaluating new liquid cooled Fuji engines. When the weather was milder the consistent engine temperature provided by liquid cooling allowed the competition to pull away from the new Polaris. The chassis was on par with the competition and the free air engines could run with the competitor’s liquid cooled motors when the air temperature was well below zero. Polaris took the TX one step further and offered a limited build TX Starfire oval race sled for the stock racing wars. The next-generation TX featured new free air engines, a jackshaft mounted secondary clutch, aluminum slide rail suspension, lower cg and it retained the styling from those sexy looking factory modified race sleds. The ‘76 TX was a complete departure from any model Polaris had built for the consumer. When the 1976 TX was introduced, the Polaris faithful could not wait to get their hands on one of these SnoPro knock-offs.
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Polaris dominated the premier race series in ‘74 and ‘75 with a completely new chassis that was to be the forerunner of the ‘76 TX production sleds. The SnoPro factory circuit was another story.
The drought continued into 1975 with the same basic chassis/suspension combo with Bold New Graphics, but in reality not many Polaris TX sleds were found in the pits.
The introduction of the Mercury Snow Twister, Arctic Cat Z, Yamaha GPX and the Ski-Doo TNT F/A (which were more race track oriented rather than all-purpose trail performance sleds) quickly put the TX into the last chance qualifiers. The Polaris TX had been a world-beater on the racetracks until the 1974 season when the production version of the TX started to show its age. Long before the Indy, XCR, Pro-X or RUSH the name that was synonymous with Polaris performance snowmobiles was the TX.
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