Specta, your right about us wanting the goodies, but the goodies are always what seem to get us in trouble. I mean, what ever happened to good old 300cc air cooled solid axle quads, nobody seems to want them anymore (big red)
Because everyone needs the goods, Honda quads are not as reliable now as they used to be, in my eyes, because they have added more features we want, beacuse Polaris, Yamaha, and all the others have opened our eyes to what is out there, and what we can do.
Let me ask you this, sure the Honda trannies are somewhat realible, i have heard the rubicon has had it's problems, but when you have a problem, boom, you have to replace, which is easier, rebuilding a tranny, or replacing a belt? hmmmmmm, lets think about that one for a second, I think Rincon can even agree with that.

 

POLARISMAN3210:
A guy on the kawi site can change a belt on the KAWI P650 in TEN minutes using 3 tools!! ( IN THE FIELD ) Try doing that to the Rincon ( not to mention $$$$$$$$$$ ) I would hope that Hon made this as reliable as thier car tranny's , so maybe you would'nt have a problem... But if you do your in BIG trouble!!!

ROB

 

My point exactly, there is no one on this board that can argue that an auto (car) tranny is harder to fix than a belt. belts are not expensive, gears are.

 

now on an automatic automotive tranny i was told that if i was going to work it really hard, like towing a trailer, i should install a tranny cooler.
considering most ATV's are worked pretty hard trail riding/rock climbing/mudding/towing ect., shouldn't Honda have some kind of cooler on this so it doesn't overheat and fry the tranny?

just an observation.

see-ya,
-MT

 

i agree, but don't you think honda thought of that, it must be all right or they wouldn't putit out there in risk of theier reputation. out of all the rubicons i've heard of one or two rubicons with a screwed up tranny, and those were on forums, and it was just electrical. none have had any problems around here, well just one. I have a belt on my kodiak, and was wondering, should i take it apart every so often and clean everything

 

Yes, it should be cleaned on occasion. Deciding how often to clean it depends alot on the conditions you ride in.

Personally, I think the Rubicon tranny is the best thing going. If I could add it to my SP500, I would. Actually, I am also fine with the motor on the Honda also. If it had IRS and the ride quality of the SP500 and disk breaks and a locker, it would be hard to beat. If they would just put disk brakes one rincon and a locker, I would probably buy one.

 

Thats realy the point. The rubicon trannys were overly complicated and had so many possible things that could go wrong, that even with Hondas near perfect attention to detail, things did ocasionally go wrong. And thats on a 2 year old quad. How reliable will they be in another 10 years of abuse?
This new 3 speed with the computer controlled torque converter and shifting will probably be a little better, but still a lot to possibly go wrong with it.
A quad can easilly be moved with a good belt drive set up. And up untill now I think they are ALL mechanically controlled. No electronics what so ever to go wrong. With a little preventative maintenance and a new belt every so often there is almost nothing that can go wrong with it. (Once they figure how to properly seal it from water)
It would be fairly difficult to move a car with a belt, but I actually did read about a car ( not sure who it was, may have even been a Honda ) that had a metal belt drive, not that much different from a 2 clutch ATV type set up. The article was in Popular Mechanics a couple years ago.
These new 4X4 quads are getting a little too close to a Jeep if you ask me.

 

i think it was a saturn with the belt drive (GM product) there's a lot that can go wrong on a belt to, don't forget you have clutchs in there too. also I've heard of mis-alignment of the pullies. I don't know why they want to make auto's so much anyways, controlling the rpm's feels better to me anyways, and every honda has that option, even the rubicon and the rincon (ESP)

 

A couple months ago before school let out I read the issue of Popular Mechanics that had the article about a car company using a CVT tranny in a car. I had a metal chain that rode on the clutches just like a belt in an ATV tranny. I believe it was a VOLVO.

 

Just to throw in my two cents, the local Honda dealer says he's spent an absurd amount of money shipping Rubicon transmissions back to Honda to be fixed, because they can't do a thing to them in his shop. Nobody's got the tools or know-how to work on them...

As for CVTs in cars. Honda uses a belt system in their Civic and Insight hybrids, and there were a few years where the regular Civic was offered with a CVT transmission.
The metal-belt system is being used by Audi in their A4 Sedan and Convertible. Car & Driver hit 60mph .7 seconds quicker and did the quarter mile half a second faster with a 4mph higher trap speed with the transmission in full automatic mode, as opposed to using the pre-programmed clutch positions, which emulates a regular automatic transmission.

Also, not that this has an awful lot to do with the topic at hand, I found this quote from C&D to be rather amusing.
"Evidently, a lot of early CVT customers complained to dealers about transmission slippage. "It sounds like there's a big rubber band between the engine and the wheels," they'd say, to which the canned reply, "They all do that," could be applied sincerely, if not reassuringly."

I believe that the metal-belt tranny is overkill for an ATV, and not only that, too heavy for ATV purposes.