The warrior never did come stock with racks and they are more sporty then lakotas(in my mind). Yamaha changed plastic, pipe, shock, made it 375lbs instead of 397 and thats about it. Its still pretty much a warrior except its got the now generic raptor plastic that about 20 diff quads have. Think for 07 yamaha needs to change the raptor into something else just so there arnt so many rip offs. I mean come on yamaha them selfs have 4 (5 if you count the new raptor 700) diff. kinds of raptors which is just retarded. Pretty soon itl be raptor 350 twin 2 stroke, raptor 200 and raptor 450. Im not saying there bad quads but they need to make them stand out from the crowd.

 

yea it weights like 22 pounds less plastics were changed, pipe, tires, it has bsr on the carb... i guess for better throttle response, and it has a improved cam.

 

It's still not a fair race then either. You're pumping money into the Lakota to bring up the CC's to equal the Warrior, and you're spending time / effort to put weight reduction on the lakota (how the heck are you loosing 60 dry lbs in the first place??) ... Put the same $$ and effort into the Warrior and well .. outcome remains the same .. The Warrior is a more powerful, quicker and faster machine. Not saying that the Lakota is worse in every situation . not the case at all. Every bike has it's strengths. But there is no fair way to compare these two bikes. The only real comparison is stock-for-stock, and the Warrior has it hands down with the exception of ease of use. The Warrior's manual clutch setup makes it more tricky for a novice rider to operate. If you want a machine that's equal to the Warrior stock-for-stock, then I'm afraid you need to get the Warrior. Everything else is either not as good or better than.

 

great way to put it man ^^^^

 

totally agree too...dont get me wrong i love my kota and its a sweet quad now but i had to put alot of time and money into it...like you said...overall yes the warrior is more power-full, faster, and quicker and its a great all around quad too...i almost got a warrior before my lakota and like the way it performed and all but it sold so i missed out on that...but i think the lakota does a great job from where its motor comes from...not the sportest motor but then again not the slowest...yeah yamaha does have alot of raptors but they looks sweet and are selling so yamaha doesnt care...but hell they look sweet...gotta love the raptor 350...

 

But with the money I saved in the first place from buying the lakota(as seen in my other post) Then it kinda evens out. But yes buying brand new I would take the warrior over the lakota in a heart beat

 

OK. Everyone is talking about adding all this stuff and cc,s to make the lakota match the yamaha. But lets get back to the basics. Not talking about what you can do to make something "run" with another quad. In my opinion they are both good quads, as far as the Yami being the best most dependable ide be hardpressed to convince. When i rode my 300ex a few years back i would get beat on top end by warriors because of the "6"th gear but i havnt seen many that were as dependable as the little ole 300ex. biggest prob i always saw in the warriors was the weak a-arms. people were always bending and breaking them. on the outside at the balljoing/tierod, the a-arms were very thin metal and this would give very quikly to hard impacts and such. and the warrior just didnt handle as well and wasnt as "smooth" as the 300ex, not in "my" opinion after test riding both. now i have ridden a 300 lakota sport too and think it is a nice bike. but i dont think i would choose it if i were going to do alot of "sport" riding. i think you would be happier with a warrior or "new" raptor 350, with the improvments over the old warrior, though minor, it has moved up a notch on my list. But think about this , if you are buying a new one or older one without mods and plan to mod it, you should just go ahead and save yourself the trouble of future probs and get a bigger bike, maybe a kfx 400. i think youde be alot better of, heck get a used kfx400 and be real happy. but if your stuck on the utility side of the spectrum and short on $ then go for the lakota. Like alot others have said, do what i did when i chose the 300ex over the warior, go ride them, and get a good feel and then choose, just remember , what you get you may be stuck with with you rewalize its the wrong thing for you, so test ride,test ride,test ride!