BuggyMasters Review: 2007 Suzuki LTR450

[BuggyMaster]

Behold the mighty LTR450r. To date, we believe this to be the baddest sport four wheeler on the market. Great pros yet a major con.

Suzuki did it right in a few ways. They made it really powerful, fairly low, and fairly wide. Very easy machine to sling around provided you can take the massive amounts of pull that this exhibits in full all out power runs.

One thing we don't particularly care for is the looks from the side profile with the little rear tires. But make no mistake, we believe that to have been done for a reason. With those tires and the gearing that suzuki went with, this thing has the perfect combination for delivering neck breaking power. I mean it is remarkably fast and powerful! Very impressive....for about the first 10 minutes. Then the major con comes into play:

We owned ours for 10 minutes and all of the sudden had a horrible tranny whine coming from it. All I could think of was dollar signs. The whine came under downshifts. You could make it go away in one of two ways: 1.) Lock up the back brakes for a split second or 2.) Pull in the clutch.

When I say tranny whine, I mean it sounds like a granny gear in an old truck. Here's the best part: Suzuki says there is nothing wrong! In fact after doing a BUNCH of research to find out how to get rid of it, we discovered that about 50% of these machines make this horrible whine. That means that 50% of them don't and we believe that to be correct. Nothing should whine like that. Suzuki's response was that the whine is normal. Just run synthetic fluid in it and roll with it. This is unacceptable to us. It's just a matter of time before something gives. Heck there were people who took thiers back to the dealer under warranty for the whine only to be told that there was nothing wrong, just gotta live with it. No thanks Suzuki.

Also note that Suzuki did make a transmission change to the output shaft for 2008 and I believe I read that it became a weak link. So now there's another tranny problem. When Suzuki can make one of these reliable and what se deem trustworthy, maybe we'll look at them again.

Pros: Crazy fast, excellent handling. Likely the most powerful feeling ATV we ever had.

Cons: Tranny issues are a deal breaker and Suzuki not admitting to an obvious problem tells me all I need to know about them. If it weren't for the tranny issue, I would have rated this machine a 9 out of 10 which is rare.

BuggyMasters Overall Rating: 6 out of 10