Think there any chance yamaha will finally retire the old warrior engine and better compete with the other 400 quads. Seems suzuki is leaving yamaha and honda behind in the 400's. Now that suzuki is coming after the 450 market was hoping it would make yamaha come out with a 400 raptor or even a new high performance 350 engine would be ok instead of just dressing up a old quad with new plastic.

 

that woudl be stupid, they keep the engine around for a reason. It is a realiable intermediate quad that you dont have to worry about. N e way i have put $400 into my quad making it $4500 total out of my pocket and I can hang right with a 400. So there really is no point. They leave teh performance to the 450's

 

Anyway, why would they make a 400 raptor when the 400's compete against the 450's? They already have one for that class, the yfz?? Duhh??? If they made a 400 raptor they would be shootin themselves in the foot, ear, hands, and eyes.

 

I've noticed that yamaha's sport quads are usually offset from the competetion. While honda and suzuki make a 250 and 400 sport, yamaha fills the gaps with a 200, 350, and 660 (now 700). I think it's smart on yamaha's part, because it covers parts of the market that were left open by their biggest competitors. Yamaha has always done this, even back in the 80's when sport quads were just heating up. While honda, suzuki, and kawasaki all had 250 2 strokes yamaha had a 200 and 350 2 stroke to fill the gaps. Same with the 4 strokes, suzuki had the 230/250 quadsports, honda had the 250x, and yamaha had the warrior which was a step ahead of all them.

 

i think yamaha should come out with a 500 sport quad. Make it Have a little more low end grunt then the z400 and a more meaty top end, Because although the raptor 350 can pretty much make it up anything, imagine a raptor 500, then they would have a 50, 80, 350, 500, 700.... I would but it

 

Yamaha has reason to change anything on the 350 engine, it's been around for almost 20 yr's and it hasn't gave them any grief and it's known for it's reliability.