Okay Zukiscott,

Your right am I'm wrong......along with thousands of others. The 400ex "jumpstarted" a dying breed. If it wasn't for the 400ex, I'd still be riding around on my little 300ex, with 18hp, balloon tires and 6" of suspension travel... and Suzuki guys would still be dumping money into LT's. Yamaha guys would be still riding outdated banshees and warriors, Kawi guys would be trying to find Tec 4's or just dealing with the Mojave.

Suzuki might have started it in 85, but it took Honda to perfect it in 86. And Suzuki missed the boat again....they had the chance to really raise the bar, and Honda will step on their backs once more, and show them what a sport quad really is....history repeats itself again. They brought a knife to a gun fight. It'll take more than a partnership with Kawi to win the battle, it's going to take wings.

 

So which came first, the chicken or the egg?

I don't think Suzuki missed the boat. They made a quad that was targeted at beating the 400EX which it will most likely do. In order to make something on par with the Cannondale's they'd have to offer a quad that also carries the Cannondale price tag. This is something Suzuki was trying to avoid. The question they answered was, "How do we beat Honda for the same money?" They had a target MSRP and did not want to exceed that. If they built a Cannondale contender with a Cannondale price they wouldn't steal away as many potential 400EX buyers as they were attempting to do.

Honda will answer with something and it'll most likely be better than the Z400. Then Suzuki will turn around in several years and up the ante again. Then Honda will once again answer and one up Suzuki. It will go on and on like this and they'll always be this petty argument about who was first or who is better now. Again I ask, which came first? The chicken or the egg? At the end of the day when we're all eating scrambled eggs and chicken sandwiches it won't really matter much.

 

it's sooo obvious. the chicken. you can't lay and hatch an egg without a chicken. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

 

<< and Suzuki guys would still be dumping money into LT's >>

Why would we be doing that? they're already OUT OF THE FRICKEN BOX faster than any machine Honda has EVER produced! lmao



<< Suzuki might have started it in 85, but it took Honda to perfect it in 86. And Suzuki missed the boat again....they had the chance to really raise the bar, and Honda will step on their backs once more, and show them what a sport quad really is....history repeats itself again. They brought a knife to a gun fight. It'll take more than a partnership with Kawi to win the battle, it's going to take wings. >>



Honda didn't perfect anything! The 250R was a great machine, but it wasn't ahead of the good ole' elle-tee at all. The 87+ Quadracer was, and will always be the fastest 250cc quad ever produced. Then there's the Quadzilla, still the fastest thing ever on four wheels. Honda didn't even make an open class racer... Yamaha made their entry with the Banshee, it's still worse in suspension than an old LT250R even with the A-arm suspension fix back in '91... I don't know what they were thinking... Probably the same thing they were thinking when designing the Raptor's suspension...

We'll just have to wait and see what Suzuki has up their sleeve after they destroy the Blaster and 250EX with their entry level machine... We'll see if those rumours of an 800cc 4 stroker are true...

Honda's next move will be a detuned, reverse/5speed, electric start XR650 motor in a 400EX style frame... Dang, that'll be one detuned motor! That thing is already very held back in two wheeled form... with that super low compression piston that's totally without a doubt going in there I wonder if it'll be the first Honda ever to start up in cold weather.

Yamaha will probably come out with a 400 class machine that will be better than the current Suzuki Z400. Then Suzuki will revamp the Z for much more power AND much better suspension like they did the Quadracer back in 87. History repeats itself, right?

 

<< Why would we be doing that? they're already OUT OF THE FRICKEN BOX faster than any machine Honda has EVER produced! lmao >>



Wrong, you need to reword that to say &quot;...they're already OUT OF THE FRICKEN BOX faster than any QUAD Honda has EVER produced!...&quot;



<< The 87+ Quadracer was, and will always be the fastest 250cc quad ever produced >>



Worng again, the T4 was, and probably always will be the fastest 250 2 stroke quad produced.



<< Then there's the Quadzilla, still the fastest thing ever on four wheels >>



Last time I checked, cars, trucks, vans, that go alot faster than a Zilla, were all on four wheels!

I wan't trying to be a d1ck, just stating facts that you were wrong on.

 

Tecate? Not from what dirtwheels said in their 2 stroke shootout. They said Quadracer first, Tecate second, Honda third.

Suzuki claim to be the first on four wheels... wait till they hear about these &quot;cars&quot; you speak of. They're gonna be mad. lmao

 

Actually, he's right. The Tecate-4 was the fastest 250cc 2-stroke. I've got an old Dirt Wheels from back in the day when these bikes were all new. The Zilla was the fastest at 79mph, the Tecate was 74mph, the LT250R was 72 and the Honda 250R was 70.2mph.

 

Yeah, in a straight line, the LT was faster...but it stopped there. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

Heck, I think the QuadSport 250 has a higher top speed than a stock 250r! A Blaster would get me off the line, but once we got going, I'd pass him on that thing. I wish Suzuki wouldn't have stopped making those quads. They where on to something there. Just everytime I bottomed out the suspension on a big jump, the chain would go through the engine case. Other than that, it was a good quad.

 

1986, take what dirthweels says with a grain of salt. They contradict themselves in every issue. Last night I was reading some old issues, they said the Banshee hit 72 MPH on a dry lake bed in one issue, than that the Raptor and DS were faster than the Banshee with 71 MPH in another issue. Then... they say the Raptor is the best woods machine in a shoot-out of the DS, Raptor and 400ex, then the July shoot-out the 400EX is the best woods machine. Thats just of what I remember reading at 1:00 in the morning. But we are way off subject with that!

 

first of all we are completly off track we are talking about z400s
the tecate is the fastest and will always b it was shadowed by spotty reliability which can now be fixed for 500
to get the z 400 up to raptors standerds just buy the cames valves and piston from the drz400 put on a pipe and you will have what the z400 should have been