Originally Posted by Canwoodsman

I bought new & the warranty played a big part of it.
I'll know exactly how it was/is treated & mine came with a 5 year warranty.
Many only come with 6 months & you pay big $'s to upgrade to a longer warranty.

Originally Posted by greg74

That 5 year warranty is a great thing to have. 6 months doesn't get you very far. That doesn't even give you enough time to know if there is a problem.

Originally Posted by TLC

There all 6 month up here , I have see a person buy a new ATV in the fall and the warranty run out while it was stored away until spring. Warranty ran out before he rode it more then twice. LOL

Originally Posted by neilbedwell

OK, here's another case in point. Found a 2011 Honda Rancher on Craigslist. Pics looked great. Just over 1100 miles and about 180 hours. Priced $3500. PERFECT. Went home at lunch and hooked the trailer to the truck. Left work a bit early today, stopped at the bank to get the cash and drove over an hour.

Lady was super nice. She opens the garage door and there sits this worn out piece of junk. I asked, "is this it?". Yep. The plastic was heavily faded and scratched (I don't mind the scratches, really, but that heavily faded in 4 years???). She later told me that it had sat outside year round the first couple of years they owned it. Plastic fenders were torn in two spots. Seat was torn. Rear rack had ZERO paint on the back. Must have used it to pull something a LOT with a chain. The kicker, the entire right side of the housing where the key switch should be was gone and the wires were sticking out. She had to literally twist them together to get the display to come on and to get it to start. It did start. She said they had left it outside overnight a couple weeks ago and someone had tried to steal it and cut out the key switch. She said they hadn't had time to get it fixed.

Admittedly, it was reasonably clean underneath but how likely is it that any maintenance had ever been done to it considering how poorly it had been treated.

I didn't bother to even haggle over the price. She was a really nice lady and as politely as I could I just left. What the heck do people do to these machines? She said the paid $8K new for that machine. Why in the world would you treat it that way??!!??

This is what is driving me insane with buying a used quad - they look great in the ad but they are complete junk in person. Why would anybody spend that kind of money and then trash the machine????

I am spending a fortune traveling around dragging an empty trailer looking at junk. The wasted gas money would go a long way toward paying for that new machine.