$299 for the performance kit is sooo cheap... I think Honda really wants people to modify these things to be competitive and go race the **** out of them. good for us, another manufacturer that actually wants to win real races. I just wonder how much the nerfs and bumper and stuff like that will cost. those nerfs on the HRC bike look awesome, if they're as ridiculously cheap as the performance kit ($150 or under) i think honda deserves a serious pat on the back.

while we're on that note... i might as well hijack my own thread.

i don't wanna say it, but it's just too bad they didn't really give us their absolute best. no CR linkage suspension... how hard would that be to include? (although that may come out in the near future, look at the Raptor, it got YZ linkage the second year.) And of course... only 10.5:1 compression, (that's lower than the Z400!!!!!!!) no flatslide carb, no titanium valves, no 6 speed (would have been great for a racing quad like the 450R that's not pure MX, and would have made the 450R even more like the 250R. They went out of their way to make the engine and tranny a bit different from the CRF, it would have been perfect for them to add a nice high crusing gear and really help in the wide open environments that i'm sure this bike will out shine Yamaha in)

I don't think one or two of those little things would have really added a ton more to the cost... think about it... Honda are re-using almost the whole damn chassis of the 400EX, (which was just a revision of the 250R chassis anyway) a ton of parts from the CRF450... Yamaha started from scratch on the entire YFZ chassis and made it out of chromoly, and they beefed up the YZF drivetrain for the quad, you get electric start, lots of aluminum parts, and still the same weight as the honda... And it's only a couple hundred more bucks than the 450R!!! it just doesn't add up to me. Kinda like how Suzuki built the Z400 and sold it for the same MSRP as the 400EX... I guess you're paying that extra money for that mythological Honda industructibility? oyavey. Those guys must make mad profit compared to the other manufacturers. plain and simple. that's why they can hire all the best racers, even for the cars.

other than that, hats off to honda. if this 450R would have came out before the YFZ i'd be trippin' hardcore. But it didn't and it's hard to top the undisputible greatest racing quad ever made, the YFZ.

two hats off to yamaha. just imagine what the 450R would look like if Yamaha hadn't have raised the bar. scary to think about it. and I know i'd be bouncing off the walls loving every nut and bolt of it.

 

For the record, the YFZ has a mild steel chassis, not chromoly.

 

According to dirtwheels it has a chromoly frame. August 2003 page 40. Right under the heading "new chassis and suspension"

i believe you more than dirtwheels though.

 

Thats Strange cause in the September's issue on page 67 it says ( high tensile steel frame ) and August's issue of Atv-Action on page 30 It says ( mild steel tubing ) .

Now nobody know's who to believe ?

 

I couldn't find anything on Yamaha's web site. DW originally said chromoly, then backed off.

 

kinda makes you think that when the YFZ came out, honda went to work on the trx450. All the honda riders were waiting for the new quad for some time now, even though the 400ex is a good machine.The raptor started it, then the Z400, then the YFZ, the honda engineers were like " we better get our crap together and put out a new sport quad" seems like the trx450 borrows alot from the 400ex could it have been a hasty atempt to "wow" the honda riders?
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's a kick a$$ machine, but from what I've read on the forums, it's not the cutting edge technology the YFZ came out with.
They already had the motor from the CRF, and the basic frame geometry from the 400, throw the two together, put on some new plastic and we're right back in it.

 

Thats really all honda had to do .. but i'm sure they have been working on it for longer than people think .. i heard rumors about a new honda down at the dealership even before i heard about the yfz .. so who knows ?

 

i think the rumors about a new honda sport quad with some dirtbike engine in it have been running rampant since suzuki started developing the quadracer and they haven't stopped since. rumors in the 80s about a TRX500R, rumors in the 90s about a new 250R, rumors about a TRX650R, I remember hearing about how honda was going to put a high tech 4 stroke MX engine in a quad way before the CRF450 even came out. and then when the CRF came out the magazines started printing a lot of information about the CRF450 engine, and then came the BS about an aluminum framed honda quad with the CRF engine in it...

I think the biggest surprise from Honda was using so many existing resources on this project. I'd bet that they started developing the 450R in 2002. maybe 2001. Yamaha said they've been developing the YFZ since the YZF400 came out, and that was 1998.