I bought a new TRX450R several months ago, and have been having a LOT of fun with it. I do mostly fast deasert trail riding, some small jumps, and the occasional friendly race with my buddies. As far as racing goes, the thing bone stock either holds it's own, or kicks a$$ on my buddies quads, most of which are piped and jetted, of equal or greater displacement. So for that, I'm very impressed. As far as handling goes, it's a little tippy, but adding some wheel spacers helped that.

Now comes the complaints, and hopefully you guys can enlighten me here. For rough deasert riding, I am getting beaten to death by the front suspension. I hoped adding the wheel spacers would (by increasing the leaver arm) soften the suspension a bit, and make the riding more enjoyable. Well, it did. A little. But my arms and back still get a serious workout when the terrain is rough. The problem with this is that with the shocks set to the softest (compression) setting, and with the wheel spacers, I bottom the shocks out on anything larger than about 2.5-3 feet high, or when I bound through whoops in a drag race.

I really miss having the supple suspension of my old YZ400F...I could fly through rough terrain with ease, and without touching my suspension settings, easily get 5-6 feet of air, and not even come close to bottoming out...I really love being able to stop anywhere on the trail and not have to worry about my bike falling over, as well as sheer manuverability of a quad...but I'm starting to think that for the type of riding that I do, I might be better off on a bike...

Is there anything I can do, other than spend thousands of $$ on new suspension and extended A-arms, that could give me the ride I want on my quad? I mean, if I'm going to spend thousands upgrading my suspension, I might as well just buy a bike!

 

I'm just the opposite. I think the rear end on the 450 needs help, and the front end is excellent! My back end is bucking me like a bronco on the big desert whoops, even with the rebound damping turned all the way in.

As for being tippy, I went with ITP Holeshot XC tires (great desert tire!) and ITP Baja rims. These rims are wider and have a greater offset than stock, so the bike is over +3" in back and +2" in front. No complaints now!

If I were going to go with tall ITP Holeshot XCT's, I would definitely widen the front end first.

 

Have you adjusted the suspension to your weight? maybe your to heavy for the factory setting and its bottoming out on you. The rule of thump is you want 20 percent sag in the front and 30 percent in the rear, so find the total suspension travel, say is 10 inches in the rear. With you and all your riding gear sitting on the bike it should only sag 3 inches.

 

you might need to adjust the preloads on the springs before you change the settings

 

Thanks for the advice, I'll give it a shot. From what I've read though, the preload mainly affects sag/ride-height, not "softness" of the shock.