I bought this ’02 Rancher 350 ES about 6 months ago. The front of the engine was torn apart, the previous owner said it needed drive clutches. I replaced centrifugal and drive clutches just to be sure, and added the stiffer springs from Highlifter while I was in there. It took me a while to get the quad running the way it should with a new carb along the way and lots of TLC and new bolts from Honda.

Anyway I race quads in a local XC series, I have a Polaris Scrambler 850 for that purpose and that quad doesn’t see mud, or I should say, it only sees the mud that is on the race track, which isn’t too much.

I wanted a machine I could abuse a little bit in the mud holes, so I bought and repaired this Rancher.

So to the question. The previous owner said he thought it had a gear reduction. I don’t know, it does seem very low geared. Would I be better off with a 25" mud tire like the Interco Mamba Lite or Maxxis Mudzilla or something equivalent? Or maybe something a little taller, say a 27" ITP Mudlite or Maxxis Zilla, but not as aggressive?

I can’t see where the added 1" of ground clearance would do me that much good, but I’m new to the mud game so I really don’t know. I do know that I can’t put a tire that weights too much on it, I’m counting 30 pounds as the max weight for the 27" tire and 35 for the 25" tire. Is that about right?

Thanks for your replies.