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Yamaha Rhino Accessories & ModificationsThis page deals with some examples of Yamaha Rhino Accessories and ways to customize a Rhino for specific purposes. In this example, a 2007 Yamaha Rhino 450 is customized a little for use on a farm. Many of these ideas will work for hunting and other applications. Also, the Rhino 450 and 660 are almost identical with the primary difference being the engines, so many Yamaha Rhino accessories are interchangeable.
2007 Yamaha Rhino Doing Farm Duty One of the first things that was done was to install a trailer hitch ball mount. This is one of the easiest Yamaha Rhino accessories to add, because the Rhino comes equipped with a standard 2" receiver. You just plug in a hitch ball mount and attach whatever size trailer ball you need. This particular Rhino got an inexpensive hitch ball mount along with a 1-7/8" trailer ball to pull a small box trailer around the farm. One of the things that became apparent early on was that the noise level was a little higher than desired. The easy solution is just to wear ear protection. Ear muffs or foam ear plugs work fine. In addition, there are some Yamaha Rhino accessories to help quiet things down a little bit. There are a couple companies that make some add on ATV silencers to try to quiet things down. A Benz Silent Rider muffler was added to this 2007 Yamaha Rhino. The Benz Rhino silencer is an add on muffler that attaches to the factory muffler. A weld on adapter comes with the standard kit, or you can order the silencer with a bolt on adapter that makes installation easier. This picture shows the muffler attached with the bolt on adapter. Benz (1-866-EXHAUST) has great customer service and the add on silencer does significantly cut down on exhaust noise. Just keep in mind that the Rhino is a relatively noisy machine, and when you quiet down the exhaust, you will still hear other noises that the machine produces. More about this later.
Yamaha Rhino Accessories - Exhaust Silencer With a quieter exhaust, the other noises from the Rhino become more apparent. Probably because of the design of the machine, there are a lot of sheet metal surfaces that can vibrate and also reflect off noise. The skid plates underneath and the sheet metal cargo bed seems to vibrate and add to the noise that you hear - especially under hard acceleration. In addition, the air inlet for the engine is right on the center console between the driver and passenger seats. It's also amazing how much engine noise comes up through the air filter & air box and through that intake on the console. It seems to roar quite loud under hard acceleration. It is possible to snorkel the air intake to a different location to get some of the intake noise out of the cab area. A snorkel is not one of the standard Yamaha Rhino accessories currently available, but this is something that can be done by the resourceful Rhino owner. Yamaha Rhino Accessories - Intake Snorkel Some people snorkel their machines so that they can go through deeper water and mud. That's not the reason this particular 2007 Yamaha Rhino was snorkeled. If you look closely at the picture, you can see the flex hose goes down and under the side of the engine and then it curves up and over the front driveshaft. Then it runs parallel to the driveshaft and up under the hood. The intake noise was reduced in the cab area. Once again, as this source of noise was reduced, then other noises seemed to rise to the surface and become more apparent. It's sort of like turning off a loud TV only to discover other noises (perhaps a radio, fan, or washing machine) that were previously unnoticeable and drowned out by the louder TV noise. Now, under hard acceleration, there is still noise that seems to be related to the various areas of sheet metal vibrating and reflecting sounds. Even so, overall the Rhino is much quieter now. It is especially quieter now while cruising at lower speeds. The effort to quiet down this Rhino for use on the farm was primarily personal preference, but people that use their machines for hunting may also be interested in quieting it down a bit.
Some of the other items purchased for this particular 2007 Yamaha Rhino include: a rear view mirror, soft top roof, under hood storage box, and an under seat storage box. The list of fun Yamaha Rhino accessories that you can buy is almost endless... as long as your pocketbook is also endless!
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Yamaha Rhino Accessories
A small programmable ENM tachometer and hourmeter gauge was also added to not only keep track of hours of run time for maintenance purposes, but also to keep an eye on engine speeds. Another category of Yamaha Rhino accessories that was tested on this 2007 Yamaha Rhino was a performance CDI. There are a couple of aftermarket CDI's that are marketed to work on both the Rhino 450 and 660. The CDI that was tested on this machine was specifically made for the Rhino 660, but it seemed to work OK on the Rhino 450 as well. Testing showed a gain of around 3mph in top speed with an aftermarket CDI because of the increased rev limit. The stock Rhino 450 rev limit appears to be set around 7400RPM. The aftermarket CDI rev limit is supposed to be set to around 9000RPM, but when the engine reached around 8400RPM, it felt as if the engine valves were starting to float. It was like a soft rev limit was hit, and it felt different than the stock electronic rev limiter. Another possibility why the engine would not rev past 8400RPM could be that the 450 (actually it's 421cc) engine's powerband does not make enough power at higher RPM's to be able to rev up any more than 8400RPM. In any case, the factory rev limit of 7400RPM on the Rhino 450 seems pretty high. So, if you don't mind getting where you are going a little slower (just 3mph slower), then you might want to consider spending your money on other Yamaha Rhino accessories.