Can anyone recommend a good first ATV for my wife. She is a fairly large woman. Most riding would be medium hills and sandy terrain. Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

If your wife is tall, and is capable of operating a clutch, she may be happy with a Yamaha Warrior (350cc), or if she would prefer more power and money is not an issue, a Honda 400EX is quicker. If your wife is full figured, she may be happier with a 500 or larger automatic.

The Warrior has electric start, 6 speed transmisson, and REVERSE.
The 400EX does not have reverse.

If she is not wanting to use a clutch, Polaris makes some very good atuomatic transmisson models... (I don't know much about Polaris). Honda also makes automatics. Most if not all automatics have reverse.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks! We are going looking around today and will have a peek at those. The Warrior is a good looking machine, we say one yesterday while out dirt bike riding.

 

buy her a rapter, after riding one i think ill buy my wife one too

 

If she wants to have a comfortable ride get her on a polaris, fully automatic, macpherson strut suspension, decent size so you know your riding something.
The trailblazer or trailboss would be perfect for her, even the explorer 250 4x4 would be a good choice for sand and uphill grades.

2000 SCRAMBLER 400 2X4

SCRAMDADDY400

 

We started off with a Polaris Sportsman 500. It turned out to not be very reliable, plus it was big and bulky. The braking system is somewhat dangerous to a less skilled rider going down hills. I could go on and on about why not to buy the Polaris, but I won't...

We ended up buying a Honda Rancher 4x4ES. It was the best decision we could have made. We rode Rubicons, Grizzlies, prairies and even more Polarises. We made the right decision. I don't want to offend any guys that ride Ranchers, but it is the perfect wife's quad. It is fulltime 4x4 so you don't have to worry about her getting into a situation where she might forget to have it in 4x4. This happened to my wife a couple of times with the Polaris push button 4x4.
It has a low center of gravity, which feels much safer to her after riding the Rubicon, Grizzly, and Polaris....which sit higher. The only negetive that we had going into the Rancher was that it was a manual transmission with auto clutch. My wife was not crazy about shifting gears after being spoiled to the Automatic of the Polaris. That is why we tried out the Rubicon and Grizzly. They both are automatic. To be honest, the manual tranny has turned out to be great. She got used to it in one afternoon of riding and loves it. Going down hills(especially if they got very steep) used to scare her to death. But the Rancher tracks so well with the engine braking and seperate front/rear brakes that it give her confidence she never had before.
I used to think bigger was better...but this little Rancher hauls me in and out of anything I dream of getting into. I weigh about 225 without riding gear. It's not going to set any speed records, but for riding with the wife....I think it's perfect. We've only had it about a year and a half, but we haven't had problem one.

Good luck, I hope this may help a little.......

Exmxer
Barnettcrew@yahoo.com