Is anyone sick of hearing about how great the 400EX is,Honda abandoned the high performance atv market for 10 years.Then they slam an XR 400 motor into a two piece copy of the 250R frame and next thing you know it's the only thing on the magazine covers for 2 years.....
Yamaha on the other hand never buckled and took their sport machines off the market.They are promissing new models for the first time in a long time.Hopefully ATVers will be as loyal to Yamaha as Yamaha has been to them..


Dave
97 CT Banshee
99 Warrior
89 TRX 250R

 

I hope Yamaha does come out with a great sport/race bike. It will help keep honda honest! but I would hardly call Yamaha loyal to its customer. Selling 10 year old bikes with new stickers. Not that they are the only ones doing it. Charging customers $19 for an $8 clutch plate has me wondering about thier loyalty to me. If they deliver though I would expect it to be a good one. GJ

 

Why let it bother you? Lets face it, Honda was the first to come up with the new 4 stroke, so it is going to be talked about alot. It is a damn nice machine. No one else has come out with anything that will compete other than the custom, $30,000 machines we see Tim Farr running. Hopefully this kind of thing is what will open Yamahas eyes. The intro of the Bomb has kinda quieted things down a bit and the cannondale will also get praise once its released. Yamaha has said they are working on something too. It remains to be seen. There are alot of Honda fans out there just like there are Yamaha fans. I happen to be a Yamaha fan myself, but lets face it. Honda fans are riding the new designs and we are still waiting for ours. I happen to enjoy my 12 yr old design machine. Im there to have a good time. Who cares what the brand is. Dont let it bother you, just enjoy what you have.

 

I have to agree with Dune Scooter, who cares what ur riding on as long as u can still raise some hell when u pin the throttle, UNLESS U RIDE A POLARIS !

 

I'm not gonna know Yamaha too bad, cause I like em, but how do you reckon Yamaha has been so loyal to the consumer? How long have people complained about the airbox on the warrior/banshee? Has it been fixed? Why, people are still buying it, so they don't care! Honda comes out with the 300ex in 93? Then the 400 in 98? Yamaha comes out with it's three in 88, and then come out with what???? Just at thought. No one is loyal to the consumer, they are loyal to the all mighty dollar!

Jason

 

the 400EX is over hyped... i know of a couple of guys that i race with and the only thing good about the quad is the motor... the swingarms are so fragile you break them at a drop off the hat, the steering stem must be made out of rubber.. it bends easy... for the price you pay for the quad you would think that they would be a little more stronger... this past sunday i overshot a 60 foot table top and landed in the flat, even with Works shocks on the front it was a hard landing but i didnt bend or break anything... my Mojave definately can withstand the abuse... my 99 lasted so i bought a 2000 and havent had a problem with either and even if they have been around for 13 years.. they are still good quads

 

My EX lands 60+ jumps on a daily basis on stock suspension. Almost all our landings are "in the flats", on hard pack clay and rocks, regularly bottoming (sometimes hard enough to cause a second "unintended" jump ). I haven't broken anything yet, and the only thing I have bent is a set of aluminum bars and some wheels (which happen to be some of the strongest wheels made without going to steel or rings). The EX will also show stress marks (paint flaking) due to the frame being painted vs powdercoated, from what I have found, they are NOT actually cracks.

(take a look at my Sahara link at the bottom of this msg)

Your statement about the swingarm is blown completely out of proportion, I can only assume you have been reading too many magazines on that one. Yes, we have broken one, but that bike was extremely abused, the rider weighed around 220 lbs, and regularly jumped the thing (into the flats) 60'+ and 10'+ height. Honda replaced the swingarm and he hasn't broken one since. How many have you personally seen broken from little jumps by non-overweight riders? @175 lbs I have personally broken 2 steel swingarms on other bikes, point being, anything can be broken when abused.

Oh, and another thing... If the 400EX swingarm is so prone to breaking, explain to me why I have had one for sale now for a couple of months, with no responses from EX owners wanting replacements? The only responses I have gotten have been from people wanting to convert their 250R to the EX swingarm.

Don't like replacing steering stems, don't crash. If you are bending them from landing big air, time for aftermarket suspension, you are exceeding the capabilities of the shocks (which happen to be far better than on any other currently produced quad). Actually the stock steering stem is quite strong, ever tried straightening one?

Don't like replacing control arms? Don't reverse your front wheels and try for the big air. Still bending them? Time for aftermarket suspension - I know first hand that they will take some seriously hard landings.

The EX takes a lot more abuse than most any other stock quad out there. Why? Because it is the most capable "out of the box" machine there currently is, period. It makes riders very confident.

As I have said before, the EX is not by any means perfect, and there's a lot that I wish Honda would change, but it's not anything like some of you would have us to believe.

I also want to know why the EX seems to bother some of you non-EX owners so badly that you have to exaggerate and blow problems out of proportion, tired of getting beaten? I was.....

 

I make 400EXers sick. heh heh heh!!!!

There faces are as red as there quads when the blue streak flys by them. Boy, they sure get mad and embarassed. HEH HEH HEH!!!

But, on the down side, I'm the 2nd owner if this quad and I would hate to think how much the 1st owner has in these mods. But, who cares, I got a steal in it. I think dollar for dollar total price, the 400EX could never be as fast as my Warrior, drag or track. I put it up against a 440EX kit any day as well.

 

the swingarm coments i made are not blown totally out of proportion... they are facts that i have seen with my own eyes and not something i read in a magazine... and anyone trying to straighten a bent steering stem versus replacing it isnt the sharpest tool in the shed anyway!! and landing 60+ jumps in the flats isn't the smartest thing either your 2nd unintentional jump is the suspension botoming and rebounding begging for relief... the 400 is a nice bike except for the problems i mentioned earlier..

 

I have a '99 400ex and have never done anything but routine maintenaince and have not had a single thing break on it and I too have landed on the flat from about 8' to 10' in the air and the EX soaked it up with no problems(landing rear wheels first is the correct way to land this kind of jump). I have rode Mojave's and personally have never rode a Warrior, but I owned a Banshee which has simalar or the same frame geometry and no matter what you spend these machines will never HANDLE with a honda framed performance machine. All aftermarket frames are designed on 250R frame geometry, nobody in the aftermarket builds around a Warrior or a Mohave. Answer me this how many quads have dominated the baja 1000 their first production year? Nobody that won is complaining about the durability of this awesome performance quad. The EX is the best all around performance quad produced right now in my opinion, I'm still getting to know my DS. Daniel