hey im looking to buy a yzf 450 and was wondering how difficult these quads are to maintain, if I should wait to buy a 700 rapter. I am 6 foot 2 inches.

 

450's in general is a high maintenance quad. Valve gaps need to be checked very often. Most of my friends had to have head work done since the valve could not be adjusted anymore. YFZ's are about 2 years old, and not raced. It was purely used for trail riding.

Then from the number of YFZ's that are booked in for repairs, they don't come close to the reliability of other quads. Cracked pistons seems to be a problem on lots of stock YFZ's. The shop owner I know have seen lots of them come thru his shop with cracked OEM pistons. The 13:1 pistons from Yamaha is even worse. They last a few races, not years. Wisceco 13:1 pistons seems to last much longer.

Piston and rings will at most last you two years if you ride trails and if you race you going to replace it once or twice a year easy. Replacing a pistons usually means you have to rebore and re-Nicasil the cylinder.

Remember it is a race quad, so stuff is made for racing, not reliability.

 

dunno if im misunderstanding something but yfz 450's arnt made for trails they're made for strickly racing MX etc

 

Tell that to Bill Ballance.

 

Thanks man that helped a lot

 

how hard are they to rebuild and how much? the reason i ask is because i am going to get a secound quad right now i have a z400 for trail riding. i was looking at a banshee for the fun factor but i'm not crazy about rebuilding the thing all the time so i started looking at the yzf but now i read that they need to be rebuilt too. and is the yzf that much diff then my z ?

 

First a Banshee doesn't have to be rebuilt very often, mine had about 1000 hours on it before it was rebuilt. My yfz had prolly 150 hours on it before i put the wr crank in it and it was still fine. A yfz is prolly a higher maintenance quad than most but it wont be needin a rebuid every other month.

 

I was responding to the aforementioned post.

 

I have the 'o5 yfz, and I havn't had any problems with it. It runs perfect, and I have well over 200 hard hours. One of my buddies had a rod break which destroyed his engine, and I guess that that is a somewhat common problem. Anyway, I recomend that you look into the '06 yfz. It's beafed up pretty nicely. it's a 449cc (04 and 05 were 438), that rod that I was talking about is stronger, the cam mod is stock, the swingarm adjust. is changed (and looks pretty cool) and some other goodies. I'm dang close to tradin in my 05 for the new one! and the new colors look pretty bad ***!

 

If you don't want to rebuilt, rather go for the new Raptor 700R. These things are rumoured to be quicker stock for stock against a YFZ450, plus by adding a pipe and a few basic mods, you can have a much more powerful fun toy than a LTZ. The LTZ is a great bike, and in no way comparable to a YFZ. The YFZ is a race quad for the track. If you like the soft ride of the Z, then you will most likely fit better on a new 700R.

Mod for mod, the power output of a 700R will be similar to that of a YFZ, but the ride will be much nicer on the 700R, unless you want track quad. The reviews suggest the 700R is not to bad on the track either.