I'm back from the lake and am very happy to say that the Rubicon towed the ski boat with power to spare, performing beyond my expectations! Going down hill was not a problem at all - kept it in low range, ESP 1st gear and the engine braking kept the speed to about 4 mph on the worst hill (about 250 feet long at 12 to 15% grade). I tried the brakes on the downhill just to make sure that I could stop the boat and they worked great.

The scariest part for me was backing the boat down the ramp (which I measured at about a 10% grade). I was about to start down when I remembered the posts about being on America's Funniest Home Videos - and pictured myself flying wildly out of control into the lake. It was at this moment that I remebered to put the drain plug in the boat - without which I could have been in the running for the $100K grand prize!!! So I backed down, keeping the Rubi in 1st gear, letting gravity slowly do its thing, using just the brakes to keep the speed at about 1 mph. Every 10 feet or so I would give it some throttle just to make sure I could still go back up the ramp.

I eventually reached the waters edge and eased the boat in until she started to float off the trailer bunks. I then pulled her out of the water and all the way back up the big hill, and just to make sure, I repeated the whole process one more time. I would have to say the hardest part is going up the long steep hill - but even then it seems like the Rubi's only at about 80% of max capacity. I never had to peg the throttle all the way, and never once did the tires ever spin out (front or rear). But I will say that I would not want to attempt this with any heavier load.

I re-estimated the tongue weight at about 150 pounds so now my biggest fear is whether or not this amount of weight will cause long term damage to the hitch or axle since it is only rated for 30 pounds. It did not appear to bend the hitch and did not cause the suspension to sag too much (only about 1 or 2 inches). I could reposition the boat on the trailer to lighten the tongue weight, but I think the way it is now is maximizing the traction. Any thoughts on this are welcome.

Aside from towing the boat, here are my other comments about the Rubi's performance in general. Keep in mind this is a 2003 Rubicon with just over 3000 miles and about 220 hours:

Transmission: I love all the different options this set-up allows. Low Range ESP for total control when working hard, Low Range Auto for slow to medium speed trail riding and High Range, D1 Auto for cruising on dirt roads or smoother trails. The Low Range Auto is great for situations where you normally would do a lot of shifting between gears such as approaching a steep, off-camber, rutted hill at a relatively high speed. In this case, where you would normally be in 3rd or 4th gear and then need to progressively shift into a lower gear to stay in the power band, the Low Range Auto maintains the perfect power band engine rpm - such that when you need the power to start climbing it's all there instantly. You never get caught losing forward momentum because you didn't donshift far enough - or you downshifted too far. This also leaves you free to concentrate on handling/manuevering the machine up the hill so you can throw your weight around without having to worry about keeping your left foot hooked into the shift lever. Along with this, the full floor boards are really nice - on my manual shift Bear Tracker I would occasionally have a broken tree branch poke up past the foot pegs against my anlkes - the full floor boards prevent this.

Full Time 4x4 and steering effort: At first I was concerned due to all the posts on this subject. My personal take on this is that the Rubi's steering is very light and responsive. It does feel a bit different than my two wheel drive Bear Tracker in that on the Rubi it feels like you are being pulled around by the nose rather than being pushed from behind (kind of like a front wheel drive car in snow) This actually inspires confidence on tight, winding trails. On a level gravel parking lot, it is difficult to slide the back end around - although it can probably be done if you really nail the throttle hard while turning but then you also risk tipping over. The one thing I did notice is that when acceleratng up a hill, the front end tends to wander a bit from side to side since the front tires don't have as much traction as the rear due to the weight shifting rearward while climbing - but this is very minor and outweighed by the rail-like steering control when rounding tight curves. Bottom line for me is that it would be nice to have the selectable 2x4 to 4x4 option, but for trail riding I would probably just leave it in 4x4 since the steering is very light and the amount of control you get is very impressive.

Center of Gravity: The Rubi does feel very stable - more so than my Bear Tracker does on the same off-camber trails.

Engine Braking: Very impressive, especially in Low Range. Like others have noted, it feels like the Rubi can read your mind, applying just the right amount of braking force. Truly awesome for controlling a heavy load down a steep hill.

Power and Speed: I've had a chance to ride several Prairie 650s, some Grizzly 600s (unfortunately no Grizz 660s) and I would put the Rubi between the Prairie and the Grizz 600 in accelaration. It doesn't give quite the rush of power as the Pairie, but it does have a good snap to it and even more so in Low Range. For me at least it's plenty quick off the line. I never tried to determine the top end, the fastest I went was about 38 mph, but I know it easily had a lot more left - I'm just not really that into high speed since where I ride, anything over about 40 mph starts to get a bit risky. As far as sheer power - again, it rather easily pulled my 19 foot open bow ski boat up a 15% grade - I don't think you can ask for much more out of a 600 pound ATV!

Reliability: have only had it for 1 week so I can't say.

Issues: I did notice the following problem: Every once in a while it will run real rough so that when you rev it up it barely increases in rpm, and it makes a horrible clanging sound. Shut it off and restart and it runs perfectly again. This first happened as I was about to take my boat down the steep hill for the first time after having circled the relativley level parking lot to allow the Rubi to warm up. I came to a stop at the top of the hill with the engine idling in Low Range ESP 1st gear and was just about to start the descent, when it started acting up. My first thought was that I had broken the transmission somehow since it wouldn't move either forward or back. I put it in neutral and the loud clanging sound was still there so now I thought maybe it was something in the engine. I shut it off and back on and it still did it.

Well, my heart sank siince I had purchased it AS IS with no warranty. So I unhooked my boat, got my pickup and pulled the boat back to the parking spot, then went back to get the Rubi. When I fired her up this time though, she ran great in neutral, and when I put her in gear she ran smooth with plenty of power and absolutely no sign that anything was wrong at all. I'm guessing that it was some kind of electrical glitch since obviously a major mechanical break-down can't just repair itself. This happened again a few more times but only upon start-up, never again while running. Everytime this occurred, I would just shut her off and restart and she would run fine. So if anyone else has had this happen to them or heard of it - I would appreciate any comments. I might just place a separate post on this problem here and on the Honda board.

Well that's about it - sorry if this got too long! Thanks again for all your responses.

Marty

 

foreman 450 es had a e-ton 90 on the back rack through mud holes and up hills. my recon also had to help when it got stuck to pull it out.

 

Gald to hear you didn't go swiming with your atv [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

 

Pulled my friends blaster outa alot of snow while plowing snow. Pushing and pulling at the same time.

 

Not much snow tho... LOL

 

Heaviest thing I ever towed with my Honda was a Polaris!!! LOL

 

ha ha, that brings back memories. about a year ago i brought my cat to my friends house and we were riding around in a brooke. and, then we found a deep spot, and he just sunk his ole 94 kdx 80. lol. i remember pulling it out, and putting it on the back rack and driving home down the road. he lost all his gas, cuz he didnt tuern the gas off. also, one i pulled it out the brook, there was an almost staight up hill climb, and i had to go up with the dirtbike on the back. lol. oh yea, also, a little while before this, he had his front tire tottaly stuck in mud and the back tire wasnt even under, so i tied a tow strap to the handle bar. and, what do u think would happen? i told him to sit on it and give it gas, and when i pulled it, the bike flipped over, and he flew off and i acted like i didnt notcie and just kept pulling it about 25 ft, dragging it throught mud, that was a fun day. lol.

 

As for towing,we use our sportsman 500 to back our 16' smokercraft into our storage garage and our driveway has a steep incline (approx 30deg). We also tow a trailer full of firewood out of the woods, we had the trailer weighed once to see if we were overloading it and the gross weight was 3800 lbs. As for weight on the atv, we were hunting, making a deer drive way back in the woods one year, and when we were done there were 6 people that needed a ride back to their atv's and there was only 1 atv by them, our honda fourtrax 300. sure i didn't get it out of first gear but i got them back to their quads.

 

lol, we have had four people on my cat 250 and we had sleds on it. we were going sledding, on a snow day.

 

i towed a pontiac grand prix up a hill will alot ice on it , that was w/ my kodaik , man that thing struglled [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-disgusted.gif[/img]