I am brand new to the ATV scene and I am trying to decide what kind of atv to buy. I know I want a four-stroke sport atv and have pretty much narrowed it down to Honda 300ex,400ex or a Yamaha Warrior. I know the Honda name is great, but I don't know as much about the Yamaha name. Is Yamaha as reliable as Honda?? I have ridden a friend's Warrior, but I have not ridden a 400ex.
P.S. Which handles better??
Thanks

 

In my opinion, all quads are equal reliability-wise, IF you take care of them! If you are willing to maintain your bike, and keep in in good shape, you will be fine on a Warrior. If you want something you can put through the walls, and never have to touch it, go with the Hondas!

 

There all pretty much the same quality wise. You start experiencing troubles when you tinker too much. Leave them stock and you wont be wrenching much outside normal maintnance. Of the 300ex, 400ex, warrior I'd probably pick the 400EX then the Warrior and lastly the 300EX. There is NOTHING the 300EX can do that the superior power of the Warrior cannot do better. When riding my Warrior I had often heard 300EX owners complain of their lack of power as a number one complaint. You'll hear alot of flaming for that statement but visit some sand dunes sometime and listen yourself. That being said, the 400EX is probably the best choice of the above. It lacks reverse however and if you ride alot of tight trails you may take that into consideration. Power wise the 400EX is quite a bit ahead of the Warrior and 300EX. A Blaster can usually take a 300EX in a drag race however they usually fall short of the Warrior. Now after riding my Raptor they all seem somewhat anemic. Even my Warrior feels heavy and slow. There's no replacement for displacement, bigger is better!

 

If you don't need reverse I would go with the 400ex. If you can afford it go all the way at the Yamaha shop and take a hard look at the Raptor. The power the Raptor has is so nice. I agree with Mr45auto that bigger is better! I had a 300EX for 2 years before the Raptor and it was a very nice woods, trail machine. The 300EX handles better than the warrior. Chet

 

RAPTORYFM660r,

I know this has nothing to do with the thread but why do you have a 400 EX for your icon?? You have a Raptor but a 400 for an icon. I know it does not matter but I have just been wondering.

 

I think he is getting a Yellow EX, and they don't have a black/white Raptor

 

Well, this all started over 3 months ago. I was going to purchase a 400EX , yellow or a Raptor. I finally bit the bullet and went with the Raptor. The Raptor felt more like a dirtbike. I liked how you sat up and the seat contour of the Raptor. The reverse is what swayed me for sure. We used the reverse system on my former 300EX. Have been going to atv connection since early 1999 and purchased Recon by the test they did back in early 1999. I just never did the forum thing until a couple of weeks ago. I sign up and start to see the Raptor has questionable reliability and if I would have seen all the posts about the Raptor problems I might now be riding a 400EX instead of Raptor. We got our Raptor and our KDX 200 out yesterday with my brother inlaw on his Timberwolf and his son on his Warrior We rode the Raptor 4.75 hours. We had had a blast in our woods/home made enduro track. Me and my son switch between the Kdx200 and the Raptor. The Kdx200 is still the king on our 65 acres if you want to really go fast through the woods. I now have 35.75 hrs on the Raptor and couldn't be more happy with the purchase. This machine rocks and for us has a high degree of fun factor.The Raptor is the perfect machine for riding the rock roads we have here too. So far none of the problems have come up that I see in some of the posts. I stress we do use our machines but we don't abuse them and keep them well maintained. Who knows maybe next riding season we might get a 400ex too if things go well for us. Then we will have the best of both ATV manufactures. The ICON thing is I just didn't want a blue raptor and so I decided to put on the other machine that I would have purchased until I can get a Black/white Raptor ICON. I am going to say it again, gosh we had so much fun yesterday in the woods I can't wait to do it again. Chet

 

It's interesting to see the replies with regard to quality in the Yamaha forum vs the replies in the Honda forum.

Personally, I think they are very close in quality; both very good. I do think however that a lot of people look at Honda's reputation for quality and automatically think that Honda is BETTER than all others in that regard. Honda's REPUTATION for quality actually came from CARS not from QUADS but people tend to lump it all together. I hope that makes sense. Long and short; Hondas reputation for quality AUTOMOBILES transfers in some peoples minds to mean that Honda is the best at EVERYTHING and therefore all others are inferior.

 

I still have one Honda car a 94 black Accord EX and has been a nice car but we have only 14,000 miles on it. We had a 96 Civic and it has since been totaled last May. A person went through a yeild sign. Air bags went off and saved my wife from serious injury. When we got the car in late 95 we took it around and showed are family and a few other people and then we drove home. I thought I would check under the hood and when I opened it there was a lot of oil sprayed all over. Well what had happened was the rear main bearing seal went out and was spraying oil under pressure. I thought so much for Honda quality and the car didn't even have 100 miles on it. Well they gave us a rental while my new Civic was being repaired and after that was solved it went trouble free for 62,000 until its death. So it goes to show you that they are machines made by humans and all machines can and will have flaws. Chet