I live on the east side of Dallas so, we probably have access to the same riding areas. There are not very many places to go for real trail riding, most are MX tracks or mud pits. Back at the age old question of Bad@$$ 2x or Monster 4x.

 

Hey 3Dragonfly you mentioned that you had spent allot of time and money maintaining the Scrambler. Was that a 2 stroke or the 4 stroke 500 4x4 and what was it that you had to repair or maintain so often. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

 

Just like anything, the better you take care of it, the longer it will hold up. If you like doing Maintenance, then good, the Scrambler has grease zerks all over it. Wash it good after being in the mud and hit all the zerks with some good Bel-ray or similar waterproof grease. The engines are built by Fuji Heavy Industry in Japan, and seemed to hold up well. It Seemed like the chain was always out of adjustment, it also makes a lot of torque when hopped up and will go through a set of sprockets and chain in a year of trail riding. Check the bolts often, and locktight anything you bolt on it. The two best things I did to my Scrambler was putting in a K&N filter (the stock paper one is junk) and got rid of the heavy steel wheels and put on some Douglas red label polished aluminum wheels. Also ran Maxxis Surtraks on the back. I also replaced the front bumper with a DG aluminum and the bars with Renthal CR250 bend. All of this shaved about 30-40 lbs off the bike I think.

The Kawy doesn't have any grease zerks on it, so no maintenance needed, but that means that some day, you'll have to take the sealed pivot points apart (a-arms, etc) and grease them or replace them. Shaft drive on the bike is maintenance free, and has better ground clearance. The wet disk brake is good for 5000 miles before replacement. You won't get that many miles out of a standard disk and brake pads.

 

I often snapped chains and sprockets, even though I always checked the chain adjustment and I had the back pre-load as stiff as it would go so the flex was minimized. I had to replace the clutch pulleys once and the belt often. The front steering bushings are plastic so, I put Hotseat aftermarket aluminum bushings. After that, I had to keep spare bolts and nuts because even with locktight, the nuts would rattle off. The starter brushes were bad for a while so I pull started it quite a bit and the recoil pulley (plastic) shattered. Because of the large play in the original steering bushings, I had to replace the tie rod ends. Also, there is not much protection to the CV boots so, one cut open and I had to replace the whole CV rod. Once the cooling fan burned out and the whole electrical system fried. I had to replace the entire wire harness.

Should I stop here? I did treat it like crap and it responded the same.

 

hours is just another way of judging how much life a machine has left. a lot of quads don't have speedometers. My Polaris 700's speedometer stopped working, but the hour meter didn't. it's good to pay attention to both.