I took these yesterday.

We're still pleased where this old Rubicon takes us.

 

Impressively reliable machine you got there, Specta. I wish Honda would come out with a 2 seater built like the Polaris Sportsman X2. They would sell them like mad. Up here the 2 seat machines are becoming a big percentage of the quads out on the trail. Last time we had a poker run there were about 1/3 of the machines. Half of those were Polaris, and the other half were CanAm and Arctic Cat. I'd love to see a Honda like that.

 

honda needs to stop living on its past reputation and start building what the people want

 

Nice! You just cant beat the quality that the Japanese machines offer!

 

We have ridden a 2010 Polaris 550 XP 2-up and my wife wasn't very comfortable on it.

She said that she moved around too much on the seat and she didn't feel comfortable sitting that high. On several occasions her seat actually came off the XPs seat and we were not doing anything extreme or aggressive. She's also really nervous what it would be like on steep off-camber trails.

Polaris has made huge strides with their new ATVs and my hats off to them.

I doubt that there is an ATV on the market today that's 500 cc or bigger that's as stable on steep off-camber trails as a Rubicon and we see more than our share of those kinds of trails.

Our friend that let us ride the new XP offered to let us take it next time we all go for a ride to give it a better chance, I'm sure we'll take him up on his offer.

Funny thing is that I have had the opportunity to ride several '09-10 ATVs and I'm still happy to climb back on this one.

The one single thing that I wish our Rubicon had is more power. Surprisingly enough we're happy with everything else.

Were not looking yet so we have time to what come out down the road.

 

one day, i hope to post such pictures of proven durability. when i ride my rubicon, i am sort of used to how it is...spoiled i guess. then i ride another machine like my dad's or firends, and am reminded of how the ergonomics and ridiculously smooth hydrostatic transmission made me buy the rubicon over all other machines...

 

Sounds like you were on the Touring version of the Sportsman lineup. I've heard a couple complaints about the seat. I appreciate your review as it was a thought for the future. I'll probably stick with the X2 version where I don't use the 2 up seat all that often but use the dump body just about every week. The only thing that the X2 lacks is a really high speed. It gets up to 55 or so (GPS) but that's about it. I hope in a few years that I'll be able to take a pic of my odometer and have a similar experience, but I honestly doubt it. I've had Japanese vehicles and they have outshined every single American vehicle I've owned. It's not that we can't make things as well as the Japanese it's that we don't. I look forward to seeing what the Japanese do and hope they'll make an X2-like machine. I love it and it's been good so far. We'll see about that new high water mark you posted. It'll take me about 10 years to get there though.

 

It was the Touring 2-up, I was comfy but the wife wasn't.

One thing that I didn't like is there's no room for a rear cargo box or bag and that's a necessity for us.

As much as we love our Rubicon Honda is going to have to make some changes before we buy our next ATV or we'll be looking elsewhere, I just need more power here in the deeper snow and I'm not too interested in the Rincon.

I’ve spent some time riding the Outlander Max 800 but my wife wasn't with me, that one will spoil you in the power department.

 

I too had issues with power with my rubicon in the deep stuff, high range lugged when trying to ride up ontop and low range reved out to fast, i ended up stayh in low range ESP 4th gear most of the trip.
Here is a pict of last winter:


And it still fetches firewood from the lower part of my friends 5,000 acros better than any belt drive ATV- locked in 1st low range up crazy nasty trails pulling doubble trailers- yeah i didnt take my iphone on that trip- then down the pavement about 2 miles at 40mph floored to my home- and yes that tire has 35 psi in it- there are 40 25lb pieces of wood in that trailer-or 2 entire 40' tall alder trees, nearly the same load of wood my toyota can handle I perfer not to take my freshly waxed truck down that logging road and the rubicon does amazing

 

11,000 thousand miles! Thats awesome.