Well I am back from my first Trail Ride with my 700xx.
Destination: Spider Lake OHV Trails Near Pine City Minnesota.
This is our Annual trip that we take every year. The Map on the MN DNR sight doesn't do it justice. There are tons of trails that are not posted on the maps. This is one of our favorite trail systems in MN. The trails are excellent for ATV and Motorcycle as we have a combination in our riding group. These trails can be very twisty with ravines and some tight trails just big enough to get the larger size ATVs through. It also is more of a sandy dirt than a dirt dirt in most areas and it drains well after large amounts of rain. There are usually allot of dips where the water can puddle.
I spent all day Thursday at home getting my 700xx ready for the trip. I put a trail Tech Vapor on it with there bar riser, a new Pro-taper KX-high Contour bars (black) and the PRM full chassis skid plate .190” thick.
We left Friday morning early and found out that the place we are going received 1.5” of rain on Thursday. The good news is no dust, but I did know that I was going to get wet (soaked)
. We arrived around 4:00 pm that Friday night and unloaded the machines and got them ready to go out on a ride. It was only three of us at the time as the rest of the crew was either not there yet or already out in the woods riding. I rode behind my friend that was riding a Honda CR450R Dirt Bike. He is my friend that races the Suzuki 450 in the District 23 ATV Races. It was misting and sprinkling on and off and the trails where wet in most areas.
OK you understand the conditions for Friday and now for the report:
Where do I start??For a short preview all I have to say is that this thing rocks for a trail quad. I have never had so much fun on any other quad trail riding as I did with the 700xx. We put on around 130 miles and I did not even feel like I was out riding. I actually feel like I was less tired than I usually am from riding my Sportsman 800. I just have to say WWWoooooWWWWWWWWW. I love this machine. Power sliding on the trails was not a problem at all. Once I got the gearing down....awesome , smooth, and easy to control power. Very Comfortable. My Friend that races took it out for a spin and all he could say is...wow... that thing is made for the trails...
It took me a little bit to get use to the 700xx as I am use to riding the trails with my Sportsman 800 and letting the Engine breaking take care of the breaking for the corners and it has been to long since I have ridden the 400ex in the trails. On Friday I found myself using 2nd gear most of the time and shifting into third once in a while but I was feeling like I was revving it to high in Second and if I put it in third it would bog down to far for the corners. On the second day of riding (Saturday) I figured it out and found myself to really enjoy third gear and I stayed in third most of the time and shifted down to second for the sharp corners for only a little bit and then back into third as I was coming out of the corner. Saturday was a very nice sunny day in the 70's. Once you get use to third it is amazing and it became my favorite gear for trial riding. You can pull a wheelie in Third gear with just rolling on the throttle, but you need to be in the Third gear power band. I also found myself using fourth gear on the longer straights. Wow... This thing rips on the trails. Once in the groove we were averaging about 30-40 mph in the trails. We did hit about 49.5 mph according to my Vapor on one of the longer stretches, witch is pretty fast for tight trails. I loved the new handle bars and they made a huge difference in the handling. The suspension on this thing rocks for the trails, it would have still been nice to have ressies in the front to see what kind of difference it would make, but I had no complaints about the suspension. The ground clearance is awesome as I found myself thinking I was going to hit some pretty large rocks that I rode over and nothing ever happened. The only time I hit my Prm Skid plate was when I was landing on top of a rock after launching it off of a jump on the trail. I hit it pretty good that way a couple of times and all it did was put a scratch on my PRM Skid plate (glad I put that on). As for puddles.... well you will get wet if you are not going fast enough. If you are going fast enough you can just skip right over them and not get wet most of the time. I also did some slow tooling around 6 MPH and I had no issues at all. I lost one screw on the machine.... It is the middle screw that holds the RH Exhaust shield on... other than that no problems at all. I am so glad that I did not go with the Outlaw. The 700xx is definitely a keeper. Just waiting on the Nerf Bars to come out for my next add on. Oh, I almost forgot... I was thinking about getting a new bumper because I did not think the front bumper would hold up.... We had to go through a section of the trail that the loggers completely demolished and I did not make it through (over a 2 foot deep mud hole)....I almost did, but I had to let up because someone was in my way with a 4x4.... We hooked a tow strap to the front bumper and it is a lot stronger than you think.... No problems with it at all.
Also...I would have to say that this thing does not feel heavy at all and I am not comparing it to the Sportsman 800...I am comparing it to a Suzuki 450 and the old 400ex that I use to have. It never felt heavy to me.
Well I will not bore you any more. Let me know if you have any questions and I would be glad to answer them.
Thanks and Ride hard...and safe
