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By: Jason Giacchino
Email: offthepegs @ atvsource.com
January 2009 - Off The Pegs
Bone Stock 200
Horsepower-No Longer Just Fantasy
In the performance segment of the ATV scene,
Honda’s been facing a bit of a bad rap. While
their competition has been making motocross
bike-style upgrades to their 450cc models each
year, Honda has seemed quite content to allow
the TRX450R to remain, for the most part,
unchanged. While everyone else has been bustling
to integrate fuel injection and aluminum frame
spars into their quads, the TRX keeps on
trucking right along with its steel and
carburetion. The motto here may reflect the
wisdom that if it isn’t broke, Honda sees no
need to fix it. Interestingly enough, if we take
a step back to look at Honda’s involvement in
other areas; namely in the personal watercraft
market, we find that there is no shortage of
technological innovations coming from Big Red.
Not unlike our own industry and in fact maybe
even more so, the personal watercraft industry
has come under heavy scrutiny of late in the
matter of environmental impact. Strict EPA and
CARB regulations calling for a 90% reduction in
emissions resulted in the death of the
two-stroke engine in this arena as well. In its
place, the OEMs have implemented fuel-injected
four strokes for the task (sounds familiar).
Like in our own sport, carbon emissions and
noise pollution are down while refinement,
overall weight, and horsepower gains are up.
The instantaneous “hit” of the two-stroke’s
power delivery often tricks users into believing
that these machines were more powerful in the
era before the pollution crack-down. In truth
the fuel injected four-stroke mills that
replaced the old oil-burners are putting out
stifling gains in the horsepower department.
Don’t believe it? Consider this; as recently as
1998, the average three-seat model two-stroke
powered craft put out between 82 and 86
horsepower. A single decade later it isn’t
uncommon to find vehicles of the same size and
spec to put out as much as 250 horses! How is
this possible you ask? Don’t forget that
companies like Honda and Yamaha produce more
than just ATVs and jet-skis. While the
transition to an all four-stroke environment
happens to be relatively young in our niches,
these companies have been tweaking and
harnessing the power potential of the
four-stroke engine all along. Think about the
type of figures coming from Supersport bikes or,
in Honda’s case specifically, their automobiles.
This year’s AquaTrax F-15X from Honda has
received one such makeover that exemplifies the
idea of innovative advancement perfectly. Up
from a 1.2 liters to 1.5 (1500cc to us
quad-types), this fuel-injected, DOHC, four
cylinder revs to a modest 7,100 rpm (to meet the
unofficial personal watercraft cutoff speed of
65 mph) and features an IHI turbocharger that
pushes 10 psi of intercooled boost into the
formula. What is the result? 197 horsepower,
bone stock, and a 0-30 acceleration time of 1.9
seconds.
The downside of all of this technological
advancement is, of course, weight gains. On
average, personal watercraft have gained close
to 400 pounds of heft in the last decade! This
is thanks in part to the heavier, more
complicated nature of the four-stroke but also
due to the trend of vehicles that have been
increasing in size physically as well. Whereas
once personal watercraft were just that,
personal, these days its common place to be able
to seat three comfortably with room to spare for
gear, the GPS, etc.
So how does all of this tie into ATVs? I suppose
I should conclude that one can never count Honda
out when it comes to master plans. I’ve been
spending a lot of time testing the 2009 450s and
though the venerable TRX450R has been seemingly
lost in the proverbial shuffle of all of the
latest and greatest models being dropped upon
the scene, Honda has in fact been far from idle.
Our turn will surely come in the department of a
thorough makeover, if not a complete redesign.
In the mean time, what does it hurt to imagine
some of the spillover technology from the
personal watercraft to find its way into the ATV
side of things? 197 horsepower from a compact
turbo-charged four-cylinder sounds pretty wild,
especially if it were to maintain the concept of
seating three comfortably (a trend that has yet
to make its way here). Toss the rev limiter to
the way side, and you would have yourself one
powerhouse dune shredder or rock-crawler. The
only thing we can hope wouldn’t make the
transition is the dry weight- did I mention the
F-15X checks in at 950 pounds?
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