My wife, son, and I explored some new territory last weekend. Some was in recently harvested forestland with sticks and branches and slash everywhere. The two big Polaris machines had no trouble, of course, but I worried that my son's little 50 might get stuck.

I needn't have worried at all. That little machine is amazing. It climbed right up and over almost everything. It did get stuck a couple of times when he put one of the front tires against some object buried under pine needles or other chaff, but I'd just hop off and lift one end or the other to shift it sideways and he was good to go.

I'm still blown away by its hill climbing ability. It happily climbs gradients that make you breathe hard just walking up. That's with three of the four restrictors still in place, and the throttle restrictor tightened down to a max speed on level packed trails of less than 15 MPH!

After almost one year with this machine, I can honestly say that the only thing it's missing is a reverse gear. That would permit him to get himself out of some situations. But the mechanical simplicity (and hence reliability) of a centrifugal clutch system is great, so I'm not complaining. What's important is that every time we want to go for a ride, the engine fires right up and he's able to go where we go and do what we do.

Awesome family time. If you're in the market for a 50cc class quad for your little one, I give my highest recommendation to the LT-A50. What a great machine.

 

How light is WAATV Jr? I've read in almost every ATV magazine that the A50 is a turtle with no power.

 

Utter nonsense. I've read those posts too, but there must be something wrong with their engines. My son weighs ~44 pounds, probably close to 50 with heavy clothing and helmet. *I* weigh ~175 - twice the recommended max weight - and the LT-A50 moves me around too. It's quite zippy even up hills with my weight. On level trails it's actually scary with me aboard because you can feel the effect of having a rider that outweighs the quad as you hit its current max speed of around 15 MPH. But my son is very stable at 15 MPH because he weighs about 30% of the quad's weight.

I remember one post that suggested the LT-A50 could not start moving from a stop if there was a rock, or a person's foot, in front of its tire. On our very next ride, I had my son bring his to a stop against a standard, square faced street curb, perhaps 6-7 inches tall. Then I told him to "Go" and the machine climbed right up the face of the curb and away he went.

There's PLENTY of power in that engine. Anyone who says differently needs to have theirs inspected.

 

Ah, I see. I've heard that CT Racing has a port/polish/pipe/filter kit for the LT50 if you want to up the power. ATV Action says it nearly doubles the HP of the engine.