ALT-1 How to Drive Atvs
Last year, faced with significant incoming snowfalls and finding my new home has a driveway well over 200 feet long (U-shaped) I opted to get an ATV with snowplow attachment to help push the snow around instead of shoveling it or walking behind a slow snow-thrower.
My purchase was a 2006 Arctic Cat 400 cc with plow blade and electric winch.
Let me tell you, it made easy work of the snow nature piled in the driveway!
When summer came, I just had to drive it around on the dirt roads of our rural area!
There are many lessons you will learn quickly if you are not properly schooled in ATV riding.
- 1 - there is a limit to the degree of angle incline an ATV can safely climb without flipping upside down like a bug. (No I didn't do this.)
- 2 - the tires only have 5 psi (in accordance with OEM's recommendation) making for a very soft tire that does not do well on blacktop and paved surfaces at any type of speed.
- 3 - even though farm tractors and equipment can barrel down the road at 50+ MPH, you cannot ride your ATV on the extreme right edge of the wide shoulder according to state laws. Department of Natural Resources (DNR) will happily provide you written verification of this and let you pay for this privilege should you attempt this. (Still do not understand this one).
- 4 - common sense will take you far when riding an ATV. If you don't have common sense, do not sit in the controlling position of an ATV, you will not survive the ride!
- 5 - if your maturity level is lower than your single digit age of your child, do not attempt to control an ATV, you will be fodder for the local nightly news. Even worse, if someone happened to have a video camera, you will be on either YouTube and/or AFV earning someone else money from your hospital bed.
- 6 - there are speed limits to an ATV for safe travel, and even though the ATV may be fully capable of 35 mph, if there is a sharp turn, it will continue rolling (remember soft tires?) and not on its wheels.
- 7 the more powerful your ATV is, the quicker you will get into trouble with it.
Again, common sense will serve you well when in the seat of one of these machines. Respect their capabilities and downfalls (rollovers, etc) and never try anything on one that begins with the words, "watch this." They will and you won't want them to.
That said my ATV is now over a year old and no worse the wear. This year's snowfall far exceeded last year's and the ATV was well worth the money paid in snow removal duty. I use it to jaunt up and down the dirt road, primarily to keep the battery charged and observe wildlife at the other end of our dirt road.
