I went on a ride last weekend with a few buddies of mine, they ride a Yamaha 400 Kodiak, Polaris 500 Sportsman, & a Polaris 250? sport bike and we were trailing for most of the day. Well, we got to riding into and across gullies and drainage ditches and I had a problem with bottoming out the front end.....let me set this up for ya. I have 28" ITP 589s and a 2" lift under a 650P. Lets say the gully was 3' across and 2-2.5'' deep with 60* sides. I would let my front end drop off into them, but I would just hit into the other bank. They were not having any problems getting their front end to climb back up...I was because the Prairie front end sticks out further and is not as "cut" as either of the other bikes and the front tire is not as forward pronounced as theirs either. Now I know I need to get the progressive shocks because my front end is soft, but is there anything else I can do short of building a new front end piece that cuts instead of curves like the prairie has on it right now?

Thanks,
TXhitman01

 

of course anything is possible, however most people & products will add additional "stuff" to the front end, rather than remove it...I.E. aftermarket winch bumpers, etc... I think you will gain more than you are expecting in this area, with either the Progressive springs, or the Elka springs ( the Elka's are truely a progressive spring set, with 2 springs of different firmness on each wheel )...

I have custom aluminum front ends on both our quads, however thay are there, from tangling with trees... ( there is a lot of extra "crumple zone", in the front end, if you decided to fabricate your own...

 

I had to make a custom winch mount on the front of mine - the fairlead kept digging into abrupt faces. The P700 front end is even worse for approaching flat faced banks.

 

Nova,

You got a picture of what you did to yours on the front end?

 

No pics yet, but coming soon. All I did was modify the winch mount bracket so that the winch sets back further; the roller fairlead is flush with the grill now. It used to stick out about 1 1/2 inches.

 

I will try and post pictures of the winch on mine. We ended up mounting it just slightly higher than the Kawasaki plate that you get from the dealer does. We had to bend the bottom edge of the grill for the fair lead but the extra 2 inches or so keeps the winch from getting as muddy and I haven't hit it into anything.

 

Yea, that would be very cool. See, I have an addon diamond plate bash plate that actually sets infront of the front bumper bars that go up and down. It is up high enough that it doesnt hit, but it would allow me to just cut out the factory grill/bash plate and mount the wench any where in that space.

 

Finally figured out how to post some pictures. Here are the pictures of my winch installed and a couple from the old gravel pits above town.

 

Cool...thanks. I will have to look into repositioning the wench to allow a little better clearance.