Wednesday, March 04, 2009

2009 Dealer Trade Show in Indianapolis Well, it was a long 4 days at the show but it actually went very fast! Tom, Ryan and Vinny talked to as many people in our business as we could. Brimstone riding park in Tenn had a booth set up and was very interested in our groups. They have miles and miles of trails and are willing to cut a few more for our buggies if we can show them we'll come out in force. We will be heading up there to impress them in person as soon as we can afford the time! We also stopped by the Kinroad booth and inspected the new 150 and 250 they have this year. They revamped the front suspension and made some aesthetic changes. They also redid the wiring harness to make it all one piece and added a winch. We did run into a couple problems that Mike Yuen said he would fix, we'll see. The biggest issue we had with the new models was the head room. Kinroad is putting cargo racks on the top of their buggies. This puts the top of the cage about 2 1/2" from the top of a bare head. Put a helmet on and we can see that your head will be bashed quite a bit on rough surfaces. We hope Michael fixes this issue. The other problem, and a minor one at that, were the front fenders. The bend in them looks to be too far down and with it being attached to the body frame, it may lessen the travel you can get as the tire hits the inside of the fender. An easy fix but we hope they do it at the factory. The 150 MAY also be under powered as it looks to be heavier than last years models however, we couldn't test it at the show. Other than that and not being able to test drive it, we think Kinroad has a pretty cool buggy. Check out all the lights! If you look at the left front brake line, it was run under the "A"-arm. A great reason to have a certified dealer put it together for you. Hammerhead off road had a pretty good showing and we spent a lot of time in their booth. They don't have much of anything "new" coming out this year with the exception of the GT250. A GT150 with a 250 engine stuffed into it. They got rid of the shaft drive and independent rear to lower the price and we think it will be a hot seller at around $1000 less retail than the SS250.  On some new news from Hammerhead, they have started Hammerhead Performance. They intend on selling performance parts that specifically fit the Hammerhead line. We got a sneak peek at some of their new line with a very light aluminum clutch bell, custom exhaust caps with Hammerhead etched on them in 5 colors, roller weights from Koso, springs and a whole slew of accessories for their karts and their Adly scooters. We'll keep an eye on them this year to see what develops from their new group. A relative newcomer is JCL USA. They had a nice booth and a couple buggies. A Suburu 450 that looks really sweet and their 250 model is nice but very heavy looking. At around 65" wide, it puts them out of our ATV trail riding places on the East coast for the most part. Unfortunatly, there wasn't much more to see in the mini buggy market. There were a couple 750cc and 1100 cc buggies form some others such as Redline and Quicksand performance but the price tags were between $8,000 and $26,000!! Maybe when we're rich and famous! On the performance side, MRP has hooked up with the Spanish company, TurboKit to build variators and exhausts for them. We spoke with their president, Fransisco all weekend about their new line of exhausts and we were very impressed. We don't think you're going to see killer pricing on them as they are really, top end exhausts but we can't wait to see some of the numbers he was telling us about in testing. TK also has a new style variator and roller weights. This thing looks totally different than what we're used to seeing. We will also get one of these to test here soon. We can't wait for the next show in Vegas! I've never been but there's always a first time for everything right? Here's a link to a video we did at the show...Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKv1zq5PI1c Tom Stevens President MBRA Wednesday, March 04, 2009 2:41:08 PM UTC

Sunday, March 01, 2009

MBRA News Center Blog Welcome to the MBRA's News Center Blog. Here you will find articles written by our staff and trusted dealers. Subjects will cover a wide range of subjects covering the mini buggy world in News, laws, riding areas and special interest. Sunday, March 01, 2009 1:54:13 AM UTC