Banshee Vs. Quadzilla Vs.The Hill

BANSHEE VS. QUADZILLA VS.THE HILL

We came, we saw, it kicked our butts

AS THE YAMAHA BANSHEE ripped past, little more than a red-and-white blur, David Edwards slammed it into fifth. He must have been doing 60 miles per when he hit the bottom of the hill. A few seconds later, amid a flurry of downshifts, he had stopped in a cloud of white dust, a mere speck on the side of an immense hill so steep it was difficult for him to stand upright after dismounting. As the dust settled, we could see him jump-

some upstart in the group mentioned “Quadzilla,” Suzuki’s 500 Quadracer. That’s all it took to set off the fireworks. And when dust from the ensuing scuffle had cleared, the only thing we agreed on was that we had to settle the issue—outside.

So we began a search for a hill. Not just any hill, but a bodacious hill. One that would put both of these machines to the ultimate test, and allow only one to emerge as king.

If we had wanted a simple answer

the Banshee does finally come on the pipe, the wheels spin, it leaps forward and the engine screams. Impressive, but not necessarily the kind of behavior that makes for a good hillclimber.

Suzuki’s 500 Quad, however, seems to have been built with the intention of leaping tall buildings with each of its huge power strokes. The beast produces more torque than your average John Deere, and a lot more speed. Unlike the Banshee’s high-end pyrotechnics, the Quad’s

ing up and down and waving his arms. Obviously, he thought he had just set the high mark.

As I sat at the bottom of the hill waiting for Edwards to get out of the way so I could attempt my climb on the Suzuki Quadracer 500, I thought back over the past several weeks and remembered that all this had begun innocently enough. We were standing around kicking a few tires in the CYCLE WORLD garage when someone pointed to the Banshee sitting in the corner and allowed as how he didn’t think there was a stronger four-wheel ATV on the market. Murmurs of agreement made it seem as if the words were chiseled in stone—until

to which of these machines was the most powerful, we’d have just loaded ’em up and headed for the nearest dyno. But we know that those absolute numbers can often be pretty meaningless out in the real world where the kind of power a machine makes can be more important than how much it makes.

That's what made this climb-off so interesting. The Banshee, you see, doesn’t just run, it wails. Its 350cc, two-stroke Twin pops and snarls almost indifferently when its revs are below 4000 rpm, but once you begin to squeeze it, the exhaust note rises in pitch and volume until if sounds like a Formula Two GP bike. And when

best power is used up and put to bed before the Banshee’s gets a wakeup call, so you have to short-shift the 500 to get the most out of it. But then, you really don’t have much choice in the matter because the Suzuki won’t rev very highly in its stock form, due mostly to its restrictive silencer and small airbox.

Finding a hill that would put these two machines to the test was harder than we first thought. We considered the Glamis sand dunes near Yuma, Arizona, which are notorious for high, steep faces, but nothing there seemed challenging enough. Other dune systems were steep enough, but not high enough; others were high enough but not steep enough. Our search continued until our resident codger and Senior Editor, Ron Griewe, was telling one of his countless “Yeah, a few years back, I used to ride everywhere” stories. It seems that not too long ago in codger-time, he and Publisher Jim Hansen had plunged down the longest and steepest hill of all time. It was so steep that Griewe “almost” had to pause for a second before going down. Hansen remembers that almost-pause lasting

CAMRON E. BUSSARD

predatory that we started feeling a little guilty about the abuse we were about to dish out to Griewe’s killer hill. In fact, we wondered whether we ought to take along some timing lights so we could see which one of the brutes would make it to the top in the quickest time.

A couple of days later we were staring up the almost-vertical face of a 1500-foot-tall heap of bottomless pumice, an age-old mountain of volcanic cindercones ranging in size

thought of the abuse that Griewe would give us if we didn’t ride down forced us over the edge.

As it turned out, riding down the steep face on the wide-tired ATVs was a piece of cake. It was akin to downhill skiing. The only problem came when we slowed down too much, allowing the bikes to sink to their frames in the soft pumice.

Our attempts to get back to the top weren’t as successful. Our first runs up the hill were feeble. With stock

about 20 minutes. But the more Griewe talked about this slope of death, the more we knew that it was the hill.

We wanted to run the bikes completely stock, but if the hill did turn out to be in the Widowmaker class, we needed just a bit of insurance. So we contacted Tom White of White Bros., one of the country’s leading ATV aftermarket firms, who set us up with two sets of Mitchell aluminum wheels. He then sent us to Fullerton Sand Tires in Stanton, California, where the wheels were fitted with Havler sand-skate tires, each with ten traction-seeking paddles per side. The wheels and tires looked so

from fine gray sand at the top to volleyball-sized rocks at the bottom. It was big. It was tall. It was scary. But, hey, anything is climbable—isn’t it?

Before we attempted any ascents, we rode around the back side of the mountain and up a series of trails until we popped out on the very edge of the front face. We looked out over the valley floor, and for the first time the size of our “hill” was put into gruesome perspective. Everything was more impressive from the top. The world was flat, people at the bottom were dots, the clouds seemed very close. Edwards and I shot worried glances at each other; no way were we going to ride down. But the

tires, both machines would get no more than 150 feet up the face before gravity reached out with its molassescovered hand. On the side of that monster hill, neither machine felt like it could pull itself out of a cat box, much less make a decent showing, and we began to have strong doubts about making it even halfway up.

At that point, with stock tires, the machines were almost dead-even. What the Banshee lacked in torque it made up for with speed. The Quad 500 would muscle its way almost as high as the Banshee, but it simply wasn’t as fast at the bottom of the hill.

THE HILL

Time to break out the paddle tires. The stock Banshee tires are tall, highprofile jobs, but the paddle tires are considerably shorter, hence the gearing was lowered. This made it fly up the hill. On the very first run it easily went another 100 feet higher than it had with the stock tires, a shower of rocks marking its progress.

While the Banshee would now scream to the base of the hill in fifth gear, the Quad, even with the paddle

tires, could only pull third. Still, it managed to improve its run by about 80 feet on the first try.

Part of the Quad’s problem was its suspension. Its rear wheels would bounce off the ground a lot more than the Banshee’s, and it also moved from side to side more; so the rider had to fight to get it to go in the right direction. The Banshee, on the other hand, powered toward the hill with all the drama of a Ford LTD idling down Main Street.

With its better suspension, lowered gearing and ability to pull strongly through every gear, the Ban-

shee, then, emerged victorious in this hillclimb. But we hesitate to call it the champ. Because for now, the big winner is the hill; our best runs didn’t get us even 25 percent of the way up.

We don’t like that one bit. So we’re going back. But not with stock machinery; we’ve learned that on this hill, stock just won’t cut it. So we’re going to do some serious hot-rodding to both the Quad and the Banshee, and even take along the timing lights on our next visit. The score now might stand at Hill 1, Us 0, but we’re going back well-armed. And we’re going to kick that hill’s behind. Eel