JUST SAW A 2013 GRIZZLY 300 and it has china written ALL over it. can someone please verify? im having nightmares that yamaha is going the way of arctic cat (owned one recently) with the cheap garbage lower grade small atv's. see the following;

 

surely that can't be a grizzly! it's been downgraded since my 2007!. well, i just looked at yahoo images and i saw the same thing. yikes. i don't know.

 

I had heard a few years back that Yamaha was contracting with chinese manufacturers. They were supposed to be building the plants in Japan from what I understood, and had to meet the Yamaha standards.

Don't know if that ever happened or not.

 

heres proof. SCARY. can-am is knocking at yamahas back door with quality machines and after 30-40 years they are now selling out to chinese garbage. nice. i owned an arctic cat "made in usa" and it was 110% chinese. they must just put the tires on it in the usa to be able to make that statement. the build quality of the chinese fourwheelers is horrible and now yamaha has their name on it! wait, they did keep using their same aluminum safety warning plates though. well, if and when i buy another atv, can-am here i come.

 

by the way, whats the big dumpy aluminum paddle rocker near the throttle???

 

Many ATVs companies like Polaris (Sportsman 90) ,AC and Yamaha contract out their small cc ATVs to a China outfit.
The good news is they have to be built to Yamaha,s higher specs in parts such as ,CDI,Stators,axles,carb and bearings and so on vs what the china manufacturers uses on their very own line.

You have to get the 350 Grizzly if you want a Yamaha.

 

- Quote from: OutlawZ24 on December 09, 2007, 08:45:35 AM ---Ok...given i deal with the local Hyosung dealer here for my service on my bikes..im gonna correct something here. apart from some minor cosmetic and internal differences the GT650 engine and the SV650 engine are the same beast...Hyosung supplies the SV engine for Suzuki just as they also build Suzukis LTR450 Quadracer. They also market the same quad as the TE450. Once again with some mild differences. The main differences between the SV engine and the GT engine is that the SV engine has different side covers as well as an external oil filter while the Hyosung engine has an internal filter. Most of the speed parts intended for the SV engine will also work on the GT engine (Big bore kits, exhausts etc). From what i have been told..most of the lesser bikes that Suzuki sells (aka anything not busa or GSXR related pretty much) is built by other suppliers or have parts from external suppliers like Hyosung.

Tried to explain to my son about the Hyosung motor in his SV 1000 Suzuki,but he didn't want to believe me.Suzuki takes these engines and beefs them up for their models. We sold Hyosung cycles for a short while,but they didn't take off. Getting harder to find one machine entirely built in one country...

 

My understanding is they are made by Kymco. Kymco is a Korean company. (S. Korean) that is steadily gaining reliability from their first offerings. Would I buy one? Probably not. I believe Kymco makes small ATVs for Kawasaki, Arctic Cat, and Yamaha now. The Yamaha 300 and Kawasaki 300 are identical except for plastics. They get pretty good write ups in ATV magazines.

 

i dont belive the hyosung ordeal with sv engines. if they are going to pay the money to cast an engine block, it is going to be different. internal and external oil filters are 2 totally different crank cases. i have had japanese quality since 1988. if yamaha is going to go down this slippery slope, and end up close to arctic crap then im done. can-am will be next because there is no doubt 100% that they are built semi-locally and are not using chinese/korean suppliers. if those cheap parts were so good in quality/design, they would have been used for decades. their designs suck hind tit, the build quality is horrible, the parts longetivity is dismal. it took kia/hyundai to build cars domestically to get a better product. on the flip side, when yamaha started building their atv's in america, the build quality bombed. i like to go with a clear all around winner. im looking at can-am for the future buys currently unless something changes. we have a small 223cc 1988 yamaha that is absolute bullletproof and surely indestructable. you can NOT tell me the new small turd built yamahas are the same quality. i guess the 660 grizzlys are the last of the quality mohicans........

 

The Kwang Yang Motor Company (Kymco) is based in Taiwan, not Korea,
and is a large scooter and ATV maker. They have quads up to 700cc, sold
in the US under their own name since about 2006.

US OEMs (e.g. Artic Cat) go back to at least 2005. This is based on owning
and working on 4 of them, and their official website.

They seem to be fairly well-made, and you can access all the parts data
and buy them from US dealers.