How well do STOCK 4x4 do in the sand dunes. I have a friend who wants to go and he wondering if I should bring my rancher or borrow his wifes 250 ex.

Im not inot jumps just putting a round maybe getting a little speed.

 

either one will get you around,,,,neither will exceed

 

Three Bombardier 800EFI's started the recent Baja 1000 in the pro ranks. All three dropped out after a couple hundred miles, because they couldn't handle the soft sections. One would think that with all that horsepower and 4wd, they could do it easily!

Big heavy machines are terrible in the dunes! The tactic is to stay light, and float along on top rather than trying to grapple for traction. The little 250 on the other hand, does surprisingly well. If you don't have paddles, air the stock tires down some, and the little 250 will serve you better.

 

In sand its all about keeping your speed up on a 4x4.......stock tires work the best........swap sides if your tires have an arrow on them.......just do the rears if your worried about your steering getting weird.
Lower your air pressure down to around 2-2½ psi for the best floatation..........we have lots of sand here at home and always have a blast on it with our 4x4's [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

 

I ride sand dunes often with the grizzly and the BF750. They do well in the sand. Keep your speed up and tire pressure low and they can go almost anywhere the sport quads go of equal displacement.

Look at my pictures and you'll see my wife jumping her Grizzly at Coral Pink Sand Dunes.

 

Three Bombardier 800EFI's started the recent Baja 1000 in the pro ranks. All three dropped out after a couple hundred miles, because they couldn't handle the soft sections. One would think that with all that horsepower and 4wd, they could do it easily!
>>>>>>>>>>

Two quads had defective tires and the third ridden by Mike Pendland won it's class. The Rincon has won this race in it's class, gross weight about the same as the Outlander.

 

use the 250ex

 

OK, Penland (sportsman class on an 800) did finish, but a long 8 hours behind the top sport quads! The others were DNF and what I read was that they bogged down so bad in the silt sections at around mile 200, and that was the end for them (????). As for tire problems, I don't know??? Lots of quads had tire problems in that race, and still finished. If I was Bombardier and I was trying to showcase my new machine and it turned out to be a miserable failure (this machine DNF'd at Vegas to Reno as well!), it would make good public relations sense to try and blame the tires...........

And after that one race, do you see anybody out there choosing to ride a Rincon??? That was a publicity thing for Honda, and nobody would deliberately ride a big ute in those conditions for any other reason! These machines are just out of their element in this kind of terrain.

The point I was trying to make in a roundabout way, is that a lot of folks who are new to riding look at nasty desert terrain and imagine that you need a big 4X4 to get through it. They don't realize that the principles that apply to a big heavy 4X4 trucks, just don't apply to quads. Sure, 4X4's have their place if you are rock crawling or like to go looking for the most terrifying terrain, but a light little sport quad is the ticket for everything else!

 

I'm not quite sure how a different models DNF in an endurance desert race=don't ride a 4x4 for recreational riding in the dunes?

 

I have a Rancher 350 4/2 manual shifter. How well would you think I would do? What gear would I use to climb the dunes? I would asume I wouldn.t want to shift as I'm going up> Any information I could get would be helpful.--Thanks