ATV in the Woodlot.

[NoDipNoMore]

I thinking of buying a Honda Rancher (350cc) to get around my property (800'x800') to haul firewood and push snow..
Do they have the capability of pulling a 4x5 trailer up and down hills with a load of wood? What about tongue weight rating?
Should I consider something bigger, Recon (650cc) ???
Please don't recommend a tractor or a skid steer, this piece of property is very undulated.
Thanks

 

[DDM]

I have a honda 300 that i use on a regular basis connected to a 4X6 trailer to haul wood out on jobs i cant take the bobcat on. Mine is 2WD and it works fine!

 

[CaseyForrest]

Not sure if the one you are looking at has a high and low range. I would suggest one that has low and high, using low while pulling a load will be easier on the clutch.

 

[Gologit]

W have two Honda Ranchers on our place,both about three years old. We use them for everything. Ours have the push buttom shift and the lower gears give good pulling power for mini-skidding or pulling small trailers. I bring firewood up to the inlaws place in a five by four trailer peaked out with diry oak and I've never had a problem. I'd have to look up rated tongue weights and such but we just usually load it 'til it looks right. Trouble free machine,we've given it a lot of hard use in lots of mud and slash and all we've ever done is normal preventive maintenance.

 

[IndyIan]

I think if you look up the specs for the mid-size motor and larger motor atv's they all weigh about the same so the towing capacity is about the same as well. Make sure you get a winch too as its nice to pull the atv and the trailer out of a soft spot with out having to take some of the load out of the trailer.
I think real gears are the way to go as well, good for engine braking and no wet belt slippage.
Some sort of front diferential locking is nice too. I've got a 2001 suzuki kingquad with this feature and it makes backing up a hill with the trailer on no problem.
I bought the kingquad specifically for working in the woods because of the drivetrain. It has a 3 range transfer case with 2wd, 4wd, and 4wd with the front dif locked. It also has reverse in all 3 ranges, most machines only have 1 speed of reverse. You might want to look for a used one as they don't make them anymore and they will be a lot less than a new honda.
Ian

 

[ASD]

if you got the room and $ (theair about 9k) look a a yamaha rhino room for 2 has a small dump bed and will go most places a atv will.and tow alot more

 

[TimberPig]

A friend of mine has the same setup. Works good except for the steep hills. He's had to winch it up a few, or lighten the load on the trailer. It works good, but he does say it would be better for pulling with more power.

 

[Gypo Logger]

ATV weight vs. load capacity seems to be a very subjective thing.
In other words, tractive effort is a big thing as well as tongue weight and trailer type. I would imagine a tandem azle bogie trailer with a ujoint in the draw bar would pull more than a conventional trailer.
Lets face it, any ATV could pull 10X it's weight depending on how the weight was distributed, how many wheels were locked, how good the tires were and what surface we were pulling on.
But to answer your question, you wouldn't want to be pulling much more than the ATV weighs due to safety issues and the limiting factors that technical situations can put us in, however, rules were made to be broken
John

 

[Ed K]

For a long time I used a yamaha 350 bigbear and a 20 cf trailer. It did the job, I then added 110 lbs of dumbell weights to the front just below the winch and added tire chain to the back. It still wouldn't haul more without getting in trouble going down hill. So where do you go from here?
60 hp 4x4 trac w/forestry trailer.
Ed

 

[ROLLACOSTA]

A freind had a Honda atv it had to go back three times because the chassis split,he used the machine for large scale slug pellet spreading [fields of rape seed and sugerbeet ],i'm guessing he had a spreader mounted on the back of the atv.

He now has a Polaris and loves it.I would still personally go for a Honda.

 

[ROLLACOSTA]

If money was no object i'd get a Toolcat made by Bobcat www.toolcat.com

 

[Redbull]

I use a Polaris Magnum 325 4x4. The only thing I don't like about it is the auto transmission. Next time around it will be a manual. If it's on a trailer or on wheels, the only limiting factor is traction and braking. I love my ATV!

 

[buck futter]

Last year I carted out about three cords of hard wood with an old honda big red and a medium utility trailer made for garden tractors. It worked very well for the most part it is a 3 wheeler which was a huge help because of its short turning radius. I had my choice of a 3,4 or 6 wheeler but the 3 wheeler was picked for this reason. The weekend I was working it rained the whole weekend and I did run into problems pulling a load up a steep hill between the leaves, loose soil and uneven terrain the wheels would just spin, so I had to load light to get up the hill. I will say what was lost in total pulling power was more than made up for in its manueverability, treading lightly and most of all I doubt I used a quart of gas.
my neighbor bought a yamaha 350 4x4 I can't think of the name, to plow his driveway and it seems to work very well even though we get alot of snow.

overall a four wheeler is hard to beat and I think it quickly becomes overkill after 300-400 cc's, My brother in law has a grizzly 660 and although it sounds great I can't see where having that much more power really helps him out.

Buck

 

[ghitch75]

l have an old 86 suzki 300 2wd with a lawn trailer and it hold about 400 pounds of wood and i can get out of about any haller aroud here on it(2000 pound winch helps too!)

 

[Tree Trimmer]

I've got a Kawasaki Mule 660 that is a dream for back yards. You can load the bed full with 1000lb of wood and it'll haul it out no problem. A buddy of mine had the rhino, and said he prefered the mule. The box is bigger and the gearing is much lower on the mule. It also has a 1 1/4 reese hitch for putting different hitches in.

Many times we'll take the Bandit 90xp (3500 lb)to the brush and blow chips into the woods instead of having to drag the tree around the house and ruin the yard. One went on ebay recently for $3500. It wasn't 4wd like mine, but was much newer.

TT

 

[12guns]

I've got a Kawasaki Mule 660 that is a dream for back yards. You can load the bed full with 1000lb of wood and it'll haul it out no problem. A buddy of mine had the rhino, and said he prefered the mule. The box is bigger and the gearing is much lower on the mule. It also has a 1 1/4 reese hitch for putting different hitches in.

Many times we'll take the Bandit 90xp (3500 lb)to the brush and blow chips into the woods instead of having to drag the tree around the house and ruin the yard. One went on ebay recently for $3500. It wasn't 4wd like mine, but was much newer.

TT

Mules are great for solid ground...but the experience I had was not a good one. I trapped bowl weevil's for a summer in central arkansas...needless to say the 4x4 500cc mule that we were issued was horrible in the muddy cotton and bean fields. I realize they are not made for that kind of abuse, but we constantly had major issues w/ trannys throwing belts, brakes locking up and so forth. The problem in the mud was ground clearence. The short squaty tires did not help. Having said that, I would love to have one of these new Polaris rangers, or something similar...They would be great for farm-work and such. -brings back bad memories of that summer in Woodruff County...

 

[ontario026]

The Kawasaki Mules I think may be better suited to more yard/sooth terrain bush work/utility work. I have done some reading on the Yamaha Rhino, and they seem like they would be a better mix of true All terrain/Utility/Work/Play
The Rhino has almost ATV manuverability and ground clearance, can still haul a pretty good load as well and would still be a blast for pure play....

A regular 4 wheeler can be very handy as well. I have a Honda 450ES 4x4 and it can pull a pretty decent load. My 1 utility trailer is approx 5x8 with 2ft sides, my quad pulls it pretty easily with the trailer full of firewood with a nice rounded heap to it, even down the road at 35 MPH, I don't like doing that much though, too much weight behind if I ever had to try to stop fast I'm sure the trailer would try to keep on going........ For little garden tractor trailers, Mine is one of the larger 17 CuFt models, and I can heap that up and not even know it's there....

Here's a pic of my ATV

As far as dragging logs, a logging arch would be the cat's meow.... Dragging logs behind does not work very good if they can dig in etc... I have heard peaple recommend putting the butt of the log on an old car hood which would probably work quite well... Last winter/spring a friend's uncle got a contract to do some road clearing for a new subdivision, he cut and skid out the wood he wanted and burnt the brush. he gave us permission to take what we wanted of the left over wood, lots were logs which must have been forgotten under the snow when he was there because most was anywhere from approx 12-18" in diameter and lots of them were anywhere from 10-16 feet long. Between my buddy and I we ended up with 15 or 16 FULL pickup loads full of firewood to split... We skidded all logs anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 mile or so to the trucks then blocked and loaded it there using my atv, the "skidder trail" even went through a couple really soft/wet areas, but the atv did a pretty good job thanks to my aggressive tires.... Once we had a log ready to skid, we would prop the butt end of it up off the ground some, then back the bike up to it, using a heavy 2" rachet strap i'd attach one end to one of the rear rack supports, then sling the other end to the other rear rack support. using another 2" rachet strap I would double it around the log and "rack sling" then back to itself... then I'd rachet up the 'rack sling rachet strap' to make sure the butt of the log was up and off the ground and then it was good to go....

With some of the larger logs the front end got a little light, and when turning I would have to stand up and lean forward some, but it did a good job skidding.... I wish I had taken some pics...

 

[Pasquali]

I thinking of buying a Honda Rancher (350cc) to get around my property (800'x800') to haul firewood and push snow..
Do they have the capability of pulling a 4x5 trailer up and down hills with a load of wood? What about tongue weight rating?
Should I consider something bigger, Recon (650cc) ???
Please don't recommend a tractor or a skid steer, this piece of property is very undulated.
Thanks

I guess it depends on How undulated. Have you ever seen an Italian articulated tractor 4wd diesel in action? They are around a ton, and Some also accomodate pto-driven trailers, giving them 6wd.
But then you can't go as fast as an atv when you're out of the woods.
....Pasquali, Ontario

 

[ROLLACOSTA]

I guess it depends on How undulated. Have you ever seen an Italian articulated tractor 4wd diesel in action? They are around a ton, and Some also accomodate pto-driven trailers, giving them 6wd.
But then you can't go as fast as an atv when you're out of the woods.
....Pasquali, Ontario

Ha funny you should mention Italian articulated tractors ,I was over at the Goldoni's sole UK dealership yesterday they stock Goldoni tractors of all shapes and sizes ,if my next business venture takes off i'll probably buy one..There a much better purchase than a quad imo..

There quad size but have a 3 point linkage and pto plus there diesel powered

 

[Ed K]

The Goldoni dealer here has one made into a forwarder it also has a 3way dump box to go on the back. They are well built but slow moving.