when is the sxs market going to start putting quaulity in their machines
There are many quality machines
already available, but realistically (overall, at least) you have to choose between quality and high performance. Heavy duty/"quality" simply weighs more and weight diminishes power and agility. No matter how fast a machine is at 1,500#, its must faster at 1,100# but when you start shaving material to decrease weight you more often than not sacrifice durability. There are lightweight materials that offer comparable strength but then you run your costs significantly higher often beyond what the market will bear.
The tried and trusted Yamaha Rhino is a great example of a machine that is certainly "quality". Since 2003 I've logged tens of thousands of miles on Rhinos and I have never once broken down. In fact, other than routine maintenance and upgrades, I've never once had to turn a wrench on a Rhino in over thirteen years of aggressive riding.
...but I'm not going to win any races on my Rhino. Most of my friends ride RZRs and they tease me about having to spend all day waiting for me to catch up. They say that my Rhino is so slow that they can break down, go to the dealership for repairs, return and still beat me back to the trucks. Over the years though I've towed each and every one of them (several more than once!) 50+ miles back to the trucks with my slow little Rhino after they broke down.
The Kawasaki Teryx is another great example of a quality machine. The Teryx is built for Doomsday (which is a good thing because servicing a Teryx is a major PITA), but it's not going to win any races unless it's racing a Rhino.
The John Deere RSX 850i is a quality machine.
The Yamaha Viking is certainly a quality machine. The Yamaha Wolverine is a quality machine. The Kawasaki Mule is a quality machine. None of these can race with the RZRs but will still be there to pull the RZRs back to the truck after they break down.
There are different OEM objectives and different methods of bringing their products to market. A few examples of this:
Yamaha spends years of R&D before bringing a product to market and they do an excellent job of keeping their projects secret. The objective of Yamaha is to offer an ultimate "sum of all parts" machine. They don't try to be the best at anything, but they want to be very good at everything and I think they do a great job of this.
All this could change with the new YXZ; I've no personal experience with it yet but have heard only good things. Based on what I know of Yamaha, they may have found a dominating compromise of power and quality. I'll withhold speaking further on this one since I don't have first hand experience with it.
John Deere spends years of R&D before releasing a product onto the market. You would think that John Deere sits back and relies on their good name to sell machines (like Honda used to do...just look at the original Big Red!) instead of innovating and testing but this couldn't be more wrong. I was personally involved in the development of the RSX for at least three years. They flew us in from all over the country and we spent three days trying to break their prototypes. For three days we would drive their machines like we stole them and then we would sit around for another day discussing what we thought of the machine and how they could improve it. Often they would go back to the drawing board and start things all over again from scratch to eliminate weaknesses of the design and then in a few months they would fly us back out to start the whole thing over again. This went on and on and on (and I loved every minute of it!) as they were trying to offer the very best machine that they could. I have absolute respect for John Deere and their dedication to bringing quality to the market.
Kawasaki does years of R&D in their designs for the same reasons. My only beef with Kawasaki is that its so dang hard to service the Teryx.
Can Am builds a good machine overall but I've had to tow a couple back over the years.
Arctic Cat does decent R&D but then they dump their products onto the market for the consumer to test. Their older designs were pretty solid (I've got a 2000 Arctic Cat 500 ATV that's been close to 100% reliable with the Suzuki engine) but in trying to keep up with Polaris speed they have certainly sacrificed quality.
Polaris has one objective and that is to be the fastest machine available because speed sells. Polaris makes as much power as they can and then they squeeze all that power into as light of a drive train and chassis as possible and then they also dump it on the consumer to do most of their field testing. For real speed junkies it doesn't matter that they spend so much time in the shop. When I could keep it out of the shop, my RZR was an absolute blast to ride. It seemed to be a favorite for the kids because it was so fast but I got tired of it spending more time in the shop for warranty repair work than on the trails riding. My youngest son wants to be a diesel mechanic. I told him that to ensure financial prosperity that he should be a Polaris mechanic instead.
With everything available today, I wish some of these prototypes had made final production. R&D first builds the machine, but then lawyers and bean-counters come in and neuter them. Everything we see today has been rather gutted by lawyers and bean-counters.
here a list of stuff i see go wrong with less than 5000 miles=tie rods wheel bearings rear end exploding rings pumping oil fuel pumps running hot spark plug wires bad
Flashbacks...it's almost like you know the guy who bought my RZR!
some of the reasons i decided to go with honda this time i hope they got it right dont like walking back are being towed
I can relate completely! When I ride in the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range I ride out about 45 miles away from my truck. When I ride up near the Black Feet Reservation I've been as far as around 85 miles away from my truck and with all the grizzly bear up there, walking back is never a good option. There is no mobile phone service or any other means to communicate for that matter so we always ride in pairs and still bring emergency gear. I've only recently purchased my Pioneer and it's still too cold to ride it so I don't yet know what to expect but I'm optimistic. For the longest time Honda lacked real innovation (swing arms, drum brakes, no front locker, etc.) but one thing for certain is that Honda has always built a quality, reliable machine and I don't expect this will be any different. I like to think that the reason it took them so long to bring innovation to their designs was because they spent so many years testing it before bringing it to market but I can only guess as I've never worked directly with Honda.
