I live on a 48acre spread of land in western Washington 18 miles from town, it boarders a largly uninhabited section that run up to the base of Mt Rainer national park. Growing up their as a kid I was always hiking, hunting, exploring, and fishing, alway venturing in a few more miles to find a new adventure. I would see places I hadn't fished, walk in to a heard of elk and have them slowly stand up around me, watch bucks rattilin horns, find bobcat, couger, and bear sign that would stand the hair up on the back my neck, AKA fillin with water, but not full yet.
Here is my question, I have been looking at gettin my first quad, and AC looks to fit the bill partly through price, specs, and reading every quad bulliten board I find, owners offer the best info if you can get by the overly biased opinions. What I need out of an atv is the ability to handle rough terrain, sometime the consistency of thick peanutbutter, climb moderatly steep hills, all while packin food, water, huntin and campin gear and still be able to trailer a deer or an elk. I'm not concerned with high speed or the ability to trick ride. I need hard workin, realiable atv.

Any and all suggestions, opinions, and tips would be greatly apreciated.

First time poster, Rader

 

I would like to say that in light of what you are looking for, there are a lot of good atv's on the market that would fit the bill. Pretty much every atv manufacuturer has a quad that would work nicely in the conditions that you specified. Honda definitley has the edge on their reputation for reliability. Yamaha, Polaris, Bombardier, and Kawasaki all offer nice large displacement quads that would suit the bill. But, if you were like me, I didn't want to spend $1000 more to get the same size quad,with less suspension travel to boot. I only have 550 miles on my 2001 400 4x4, but they have been trouble free miles. The only time I was worried about making it home was when I broke a valve stem about 20 miles into the woods. But mechanically, it has always gotten me where I wanted to go. Sometimes, even places I wished I hadn't! It has first rate rack and towing capacity, and I am sure that the 500 would have more than enough power to trailer a deer. If you look at the specs for the camparable quads, AC has most everyone beat on paper. I have had ridden with new Gizzly's and Rubicon's and there were more situations where I was able to get through the terrain without help than what they had. Note that these were all stock quads, mine included. Modified may be different. Also, the ride of the AC is, in my opinion better than that of the Griz or Rubicon. Just my 2 cents.

 

For what you are wanting to do, I would say the 500i would be ideal. They have some of the highest ground clearence and wheel travel available and offer a ver smooth and stable ride. They are a work horse atv.. Yes all manufacturers do offer what you are looking for but for price and quality the Arctic Cats will come out ahead almost everytime.

 

You will find that almost any ATV will offer what you need. Heck, my old Suzuki King Quad 300 can do all this stuff and it has. So you have to ask yourself do you want to just do this and be happy OR do you want to do these things and then MORE. With the bigger CC machines you get more excitment out of your ride. The only reason to get a big CC ATV is for the power factor, how fast you can make it through the mud, how far you can make it. My old Kind Quad will pull the same weight as the Polaris 700 but at a much slower pace. Just because the ATV is rated at a certain pulling weight doesn't mean anything really.

So if you want to just get the job done go with a smaller machine and pay less. But if you want to play and spin tires in the mud like a mad man too afterwards than go for a big bore machine. The 500i is a great in between quad for work and play. It can work like dog if you need it to and it can also play. The play aspect is a little lower than some of the other big bores because the speed and acceleration is not there but the shocks give the ATV and wicked smooth ride over the rough stuff and believe it or not you can get some good air on the i models and still land with confidence.

Its all up to you and what you want to do with the quad. There are so many factors you have to take into consideration. I hope you ask more question before you go and buy an ATV, most of us on this forum will give you unbiased answers like these and try to get you pointed in the right direction.

 

Thanks for the info guys, I'm sure I'll have a ton more questions before I buy one. The one AC owner in my area that i've talk to had nothing but positive things about his. The rest said they would not buy one, but when pressed for a reason why they admitted that they really didn't know anything about the AC quads as far as proformance. Some of the things, other than what the online owners had to say that made me take along hard look at AC were. AC is still farly new to the atv market but has a good name in the snowmobile. Alot of the time, but not always, the new entry has a tendincy to develope a strong reliably product very early on. #1 good or bad press can kill a new product line, older and more established companys tend to weather the storm alot better, just off of name recognition alone, don't make it even more of an up hill battle. #2 I sure they disected there compediters atv new and old, learning alot about the evolution of the atv and how to improve upon it.
Anyway, heading out of the house for a while, going to stop by the AC dealers and take a better look, will try not to drool to much. Going to take my dad out to lunch.
As a side note, not trying to say the other companys are getting fat and lazy, they just make it harder to deside on the right Atv for me. Varity is the spice of life.
Thanks again Rader

 

Rader,

I have a 500i with 150 miles on it so I don't have enough time on it to give you any meaningful advice from experience. However, like you, I did a lot of research (several months worth) before making my choice and a lot of it was done on these and other forums. I weeded out the natural bias and concentrated on what kind of problems they were having and and how many negative issues were being discussed.

There have been some minor annoyances (squeaky wheels, vibration noise from the skid plate, and difficulty unlatching the seat) with my 500 that were easy to fix myself but it seems to be a very solid machine overall. The other negative is that AC pretty much leaves it to their dealers to deal with problems and it is almost impossible to get any responsiveness from the company itself. I don't know if that is unique to AC but the message is make sure you get a good dealer.

Bob

 

I would say that all in all Arctic Cat puts out a very good quality product![img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

 

Well I hopped on a 500i and gave it a start, It sounded strong and felt comfortable. Wasn't able to take it for a test spin, but I don't think a flat small gravel parking lot would tell me much about the machine other than basic steering respone. The salesman I talked to was very good at answering my questions, and not pullin that high pressure sales BS. He also was an AC owner and used his hunting and trail riding he also was their mechanic and told me several storys about the ACs he has fixed, and what he thought caused them. Most of the time it's human error, but not always. Overall impression was good, and at this point AC is defintly in the lead for my hard earned dollar. Almost every time I have gone over to the Yamaha, Polaris and Honda shop someone is droping off an atv to fix, this is nether good or bad, but it does make me wonder. They also don't seem to helpful when I was asking questions and asking to compare theres to an AC made them pretty defendsive. One thing I'd have to say is most of the quad owners I know beat the @#$@ out of their atvs and none of them own an AC. Just an observation.
RADER


<< Hold on I saw this in a cartoon once, I think we can make it ! >>

 

AC also will stand by their products because I have seen some people tear up their new ACs and take it to the dealer here and almost always AC will cover it under warranty. Can't beat that! [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

 

Just got off the phone with my dad and he was telling me that on the way down the driveway headin to the office he saw between 15 and 18 elk headin into the woodlot on the property, one of those big bulls would look great behind an AC 500i.
Rader