Hi all. New to the forum and was looking to purchase one of these 2 quads in the next few days. I can get the bayou for almost 700 bucks less than the Prarie both brand new. Was wondering if the bayou handles that much worse than the Prairie cause of the lesser suspension travel? I read a review here on the bayou and it said most of the earlier earlier problems pre 2000 model year have been fixed esp. the suspension. Also does the auto tranny rob the Prairie of hp compared to the dual range bayou? Are both comparible as far as mudding or trail riding? Also is the bayou jumpable over smaller jumps(not looking to be doing 60 ft. doubles or anything on it)? Also how reliable are the 2 as I've heard of some Prairies having belts broke after only a year(not as bad as a Polaris anyway)? Sorry bout the amount of questions but for 700 less am I making the right choice by picking the bayou over the Prairie? Anyone with exp. with either of these 2 your comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance....Brian

 

Brian,
My dad has the prairie 300 4x4. I love it compared to the Polaris 325 that my dad's friend has. My only drawback is that you always have to start it in nuetral. Somebody suggested talking to kawasaki and ask if they make a overide switch for it but I have not got around to it yet. I don't know much about the bayou, just the prairie. I am going to try and talk my dad into adding a new pipe and rejetting the carb and it should wake it up a lot more.

 

I would call the Bayou more of a workhorse machine than the auto-equipped Prairie. No doubt the Prairie would also work well as a utility quad, only that the beltless Bayou would take to repeated heavy loads farther down the road.

If you plan to ride more and haul less, go with the Prairie.

 

My mind was made up for me. My wife said 'you get an auto or you get nothing'. I have a nice new Praire 300 4x4 in the garage.

The 2 quads share a motor but little else. The Praire esentually is a Praire 400 with a motor swap. I believe the Praire has larger payload and rack rating. It also has larger tires and suspension.

Last weekend I took it to the deer lease in East TX. It had been raining there for better than a week. The road was 2 miles of mud with an occational water hole to the head lights. None of the 3 atv (2 praires, 1 polaris) had belt problems.

In a nutshell, if my wife didn't make me get the auto, I still would have. I couldn't be happier.

 

You can overiride the starting in nuetral only crud by jumping a wire in the small rubber wire housing that sits above the battery. I forgot wich wires to jump (it's been a while). But the harness looks like a rubber nub, 1/2" around at the top and about 1.5" long. There will be 4 wires under the rubber boot and if you jump the right two you can start it in any gear. Do a searsch, the info might still be in the archives. If I wake up early enough to go look at mine I'll let you know which two wires to jump.

p.s. don't ask the Kawasaki guy's. They will not like the sound of the mod. They took this jumper off my dads quad (300 4x4 prarie with 3300 miles and still running strong) when he took it in for a service.