Suit Of Armor - Our Impressions After Testing
When traversing rocks, stumps, logs and such, Suzuki's armor seem to be most at home. They provide a smooth surface to allow
the quad to slide off of the obstacles quite easily, and do so without interfering with forward progress or the suspensions
articulation.
During regular trail runs, hide speed maneuvers and jumping the big quad, the armor plating can simply be forgotten about.
They do their job perfectly well and the 6 or so extra added pounds aren't even noticeable.
If you find yourself around a lot of mud however, you may want to consider not installing the front brush guard. The big
front opening acts as a huge scoop and sucks in pounds of mud. We also found that the large flat front surface can stop the
quad dead in its tracks when hitting a gooey steep ascent. So much so that it took another quad with a 3,000 pound winch (and
a snatch block) to extricate it from its muddy tomb.
After a hard day of riding, the skidplates and armor cleaned up well, but the rear A-Arm guards and front brush guard trapped
about 10 pounds of mud and debris. We had to remove the rear A-Arm guards just to free it of the mud, which was packed around
the axle shafts.
In all types of terrain except mud, the skidplate systems worked perfectly and we wouldn't trade them for anything else.
Perhaps if the front brush guard and rear A-Arm guards had some two inch wholes drilled in the bottom, the goo could escape
more easily, especially during clean up.
Our overall impression - The new aluminum armor is light, strong, attractive, and will withstand a great deal of abuse. We
only added about 6 extra pounds to our KingQuad, and the complete installation can be accomplished in less than two hours with
a few simple hand tools.
| American Suzuki Motor Corp. |
American Suzuki MC/ATV Customer Service
P.O. BOX 1100
Brea, CA 92822
phone: 1-800-828-RIDE (1-800-828-7433)
website: www.suzukicycles.com
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