# Whats "alot" of miles on a ATV?



## DallanC (Jan 13, 2009)

Looking for another ATV, I see alot of ad's on KSL for atvs, people saying "low miles" where they have 5k, 7k etc etc. I get it, they want their ad to be appealing... but is that really low miles? Whats considered "high" miles then?

I have a Foreman I bought new in 1997, already wore out the original tires grinding up steep rocky trails. It just passed 3k miles on the ML hunt this year and has 550 hours. That means an average speed of around 5.5mph. I consider this thing heavily used, so when I see someone listing a "Low Mileage" atv with 5k miles, I have to scratch my head, let alone those with +10k.

Is 5k low? Whats average? 10k? 15k?


-DallanC


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## Critter (Mar 20, 2010)

ATV's are a crap shoot on mileage. I have a 2000 Yamaha Kodiak that I have gone through 3 sets of tires and am on my 4th set. I'll put around 1000 miles a year on it that I know of and ran it quite a bit before I installed a kit to put a speedometer and odometer onto it. 

I would say that low miles on a ATV is going to be less than 1000. That is a lot of riding for a normal person depending on the age of it. 5000 miles is going to be quite a bit of trail riding.


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## DallanC (Jan 13, 2009)

Critter said:


> I would say that low miles on a ATV is going to be less than 1000. That is a lot of riding for a normal person depending on the age of it. 5000 miles is going to be quite a bit of trail riding.


That's my thinking as well. I just looked at an ad with 13,000 miles on it..! Good lord, that's an amazing amount of time riding.

I have a 1996 XR250L street legal motorcycle that only has just shy of 5k miles on it.

-DallanC


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## Fowlmouth (Oct 4, 2008)

I agree, way too many people trying to pass their machines off as "low mileage". I think a lot of these guys figure their machine is 10 years old and only 1000 miles per year so it's gotta be low miles. Guess what? it's still 10,000 miles if you put it on the first year or you do it in ten. I consider low mileage anything under 1,500 miles and if it has been properly maintained and not beat to shi+.


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## Nambaster (Nov 15, 2007)

I feel like ATV's hardly ever require any maintenance, but then again I have had mostly hondas. To be honest we have had some Polaris ATV's that have been a real pain in the neck. Fixing those things is so easy and cheap that I don't really worry too much about condition that the eye can't see or what can be detected on a test drive.


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## Huge29 (Sep 17, 2007)

Hondas are indeed very tough, polaris and artic cat are both the high performance = high maintenance models, not my kind of machine. I have a King Quad 450 that we got with about 1,100 miles and was pristine and now has about double that just 3 years later and rolled 3 times with some people who would not have allowed to drive, but that is how it works with numerous partners on a cabin...
point being 1,100 was definitely low and double that isn't terrible in actual miles, but it is not the machine it was for sure. So even 2,200 can be rough.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

Critter said:


> ATV's are a crap ...............................


I agree.

.


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## Iron Bear (Nov 19, 2008)

I've got a 04 foreman with 16k miles. New tires rear wheel bearings a few batteries, gas and oil is all its needed. I'm sure it will be good to go for another 10k. So long as I don't let kids ride it.


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## Bax* (Dec 14, 2008)

People who don't know much about ATVs would generally look at a 5k mile ATV and compare it to their car and think that is low mileage for the year. I was always taught that if an ATV surpassed 800-1k miles in a year, it was a high mileage machine.

Ive been on trips where we hit 150 miles in 2 days down in areas like Moab where you can really open up and zip around the area, but I have also been in areas where I barely put 20 miles on the machine.

I guess it all depends on your style of riding that has been pointed out here.


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## torowy (Jun 19, 2008)

i would say under 1500 is "low" miles


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## Bax* (Dec 14, 2008)

torowy said:


> i would say under 1500 is "low" miles


 Assuming it isn't a 2 year old machine, I'd agree.


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## Fowlmouth (Oct 4, 2008)

Bax* said:


> Assuming it isn't a 2 year old machine, I'd agree.


1500 miles is 1500 miles whether you do it in one trip or over a period of 5 years. 
When I purchased my Grizzly I had no intention of getting a brand new machine, but I couldn't find a nice clean used one. Even the machines that had low miles had problems such as, broken plastics, bent racks, oil leaking from seals, lights that didn't work, etc. I figured for an extra grand I would just avoid the headache and buy new.


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## twinkielk15 (Jan 17, 2011)

At the dealership we rarely see them come in with over 3K miles. Like has been said, it all depends on the user. We have some with only 1K miles but they've been put away wet and dirty and not maintained. We have others come in with over 5K but they've been in for service every year and kept covered and they look and run like new. Very hit and miss. But, in general, I would agree that below 2K miles is good and over 5K is risky.


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## Daisy (Jan 4, 2010)

I guess low miles is relative. In our application, anything below 10K is "low" miles, 20-30K miles over its lifetime (3-4 year duty cycle) is not unusual. Our Foreman's are well maintained, but working on the GSL, and hauling a trailer with 800 lbs of weight multiple times a day is the norm.


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## DallanC (Jan 13, 2009)

I take good care of my Foreman too... still broke something in the tranny and locked it up 300 miles ago, thank goodness it was litterally in the driveway still so we winched it into the truck bed and hauled it to the dealer. They fixed it for $400. Wifes TRX300 has been babied as well but that stupid thing still dropped a valve while loading it after a fun day of riding (again, got really lucky to be litterally putting it on the trailer when it died. $750 for that one. I'm a big honda fan... but still, seems you still run into the random stuff that can go wrong. 

I have no plans to buy a ATV that has higher miles than my nearly 20 year old foreman though.

-DallanC


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## Critter (Mar 20, 2010)

Any of the ATV manufactures can be good or bad depending on how the owners take care of them. I usually change the oil in my Yamaha once a year along with other maintenance. I put off replacing the drive shaft boot for 7 or 8 years now and did it over the last two days....now that is something that I don't want to do again, but now I know the short cuts to replacing it and could quite possibly do it in a couple of hours instead of two days. 

I have friends that have Polaris, Honda's, Artic Cat's, and Kawasaki's with no more problems other than the regular maintenance but then things break on any and all of them and if you neglect any of them they just may leave you out in the cold.

But I'll still say that a ATV with more than 1,000 miles on it is not a low mileage machine.


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## kk11 (Sep 17, 2007)

I just sold a Rubicon with 15,000 miles on it and still going good. I have had 3 Ranchers with 10,000+ miles and still going good. I have had real good luck with my Hondas. A lot of miles to me would be 10,000 plus.


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## bossloader (Sep 11, 2007)

miles are not what you need to worry about, ATV'S should have hour meters like construction equipment because I can put 10 miles on my bike but it is mud bogging and rock crawling and the bike has had 100 hours I have a Arctic Cat 500 trv 2003 with just over 3000 miles on it 13 years old the only problems I have had are cv boots getting torn or just rotting out my brother had a cat go 13000 miles then a tree fell on it any way miles on an ATV are just like miles on a car sometimes high mileage is not the worst thing they have seen.


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## KineKilla (Jan 28, 2011)

My 2014 Grizzly now has around 650 miles on it...it doesn't seem like high miles to me but it goes wherever I ask it to so it's not usually gentle dirt road riding. I average about 10mph and am meticulous about maintenance.


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## 2full (Apr 8, 2010)

I ride quite a bit and average 400 miles a year. I sold' 86 and '87 suzuki's a couple of years ago that I changed the oil and sparkplug in every year. They still ran great.
I have an 01' King Quad that I bought in '02 that has been serviced the same way, and still runs great. Has 4,200 miles.
My '04 Rubicon has 4,700 on it, runs great but needs new tires. I keep them garaged all winter, and covered at the cabin in the summer.
To me 10,000+ is a lot of miles. esp if it is only a few years old.


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## colorcountrygunner (Oct 6, 2009)

Last year I bought a 2001 Honda Rancher with over 10,000 miles, but the engine had recently been rebuilt. Not long after buying it I moved from Cedar City to north of the Payson-Dixon line and I have hardly got to use the stupid thing. That has got to change!


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