It never rains…. It always pours, as the old saying goes, and that is true in many situations in life. We have had a long drought here at Dirt And Trail Magazine as far as quad tests are concerned, and then suddenly we get 3 all at once – which is a good thing. The most recent of which was the Big Boy Roamer 180F. Our offices are out in rural East Rand and the bosses laaities were lazing about during one of the numerous school holidays, so we put them to work out in the lands, and boys being boys they turned it into a jol.
Firstly, it is quite a spectacular looking bit of kit with chunky tyres wrapped around some good looking shiny mags. The modern angular styling is complemented by a sturdy nudge bar, front and rear carry racks, a very smart digital dashboard, a wide comfy seat and some pretty cool graphics on a brilliant white body kit and it is claimed it can carry a max rider weight of 165kg’s, so a really big “Boer Seun” is no problem.
The single cylinder electric start, 178cc, 4-stroke, air-cooled engine is mated to a CVT gearbox with Forward – Neutral – Reverse. Driving the rear axle is a chain drive that develops 7,3Kw at 7,500rpm and 10N.m at 6,000rpm with a claimed top speed of 60 km/h.
This is fitted to a vivid orange frame and balanced on those chunky 21” wheels which means ground clearance is really good. The whole lot is brought to a stop by disc brakes front and rear. Service intervals are at every 3,000km’s or once every 6 months. For more specs and info click or tap here, we want to tell how it rides.
The 2 lads we tasked with reviewing the Big Boy roamer 180F are of a fairly sturdy build and are good off-road riders on 250cc 4-stroke dirt bikes and were ready to give the Roamer 180F a proper seeing to. Tristan was out first and dressed in full off-road kit and hit the trails hard. He bounced donga’s, tore around the mealie fields, splashed through rivers, climbed up rocky koppies and just generally acted like a hooligan on the Big Boy ATV. He was having so much fun that we had to growl at him to come back in and as always, especially with a brand new, not run-in unit we were quite concerned about scratches, dings and general damage. Much to our surprise and relief, once we washed all the trail dirt off of it , it was still sparkling new.
Tristan says: I was a little ‘meh’ about testing a quad, especially an automatic 180cc 4-stroke, but it was actually surprisingly good fun to ride and I kinda forgot about the time. I am not the biggest oke around, but I am also not little and I found that I had more than enough space to move around as needed. The handlebars are nice and high and wide, the seat is very comfortable and the footwells protected me from a lot of the mud and dirt I was riding through.
The power delivery, although nowhere near my 250FX, was really quite good and I could even get it to slide around quite easily. I was expecting to struggle a bit in the rocks, but the power was enough to roll the big wheels over easily. It was also lekker just to ride, aim at dongas, rivers, rocks and mud puddles without having to worry about being in the right gear. Sometimes automatics are quite fun and relaxing to ride. Just twist the throttle and go.
I wouldn’t try jumping it though, firstly it is not designed for that and the suspension felt like it would have taken a beating. I found a nice enough dirt road and pushed a bit to see how fast I could get it to go and had to slow down at around 50 kmh because I ran out of road, but it was still accelerating when I backed off the throttle. The brakes are pretty good as well.
I had a fun afternoon on this quad, would I swap my 250Fx for one? Probably not, but I would happily ride this again if it was available, or even go marking trails on it. I think the racks are quite lekker to carry a cooler box with snacks and cold drinks and a bag or a box for all the tools we need while marking, better than trying to carry everything on your back while marking
Next we gave it to Kyle, the younger of the two, but slightly taller and heavier, and sent him out to go feed the chickens, check on the livestock in the fields and inspect fence posts. He had to strap his crate of tools on the rack, which was easy enough and bounce along quite right terrain for the most part, travelling at a fairly sedate pace most of the way. This is what he had to say:
Kyle says: Initially I found the suspension to be uncomfortably hard, but worked out fairly quickly the tyres were pumped up too hard, so I dropped them down to about half a bar by holding in the valve to a count of 90 on each wheel.
This made it a completely different machine to ride, instead of breaking my teeth bouncing over dried out cattle trails and clumps of veld grass, suddenly it was soft and comfortable and the suspension could actually do its work properly.
Mostly, I like going as fast as possible on my bike, but sometimes it is nice just to cruise around the fields in the sunshine, look at what the cows and the sheep are up to, listen to the bees buzzing around and the wind rustling the willow trees down by the river.
You can’t really do that on anything sporty, nor can you carry a box of tools with you. Normally I have to put the tools in my backpack which is uncomfortable, so it was nice not to have them on my back for a change.
Down by the river it gets quite swampy and muddy and always difficult to cut through there when I need to go. With their tyres at the correct pressures I cruised through easily, and just for fun reversed and did it a couple of times just to make sure. The cool thing is when you do get stuck in a donga you can just put it in reverse and back out the way you came. I actually had quite a nice afternoon “working” out in the veld. The one thing I did have to get used was how narrow it is, the wheels aren’t quite wide enough to be on either side of the middelmannetjie on the tweespoor tracks in the veld, so that was a bit awkward, but I learned to ride around the problem. Other than that I have no complaints.
It doesn’t look too bad either, very modern looking and it does go quite well and stop quite well. Like Tristan, I wouldn’t swap my dirt bike for it, but I also wouldn’t object to riding it again if I had to.
And there you have it, the Big Boy Roamer 180F is a very capable workhorse as well as a fun leisure machine and at just under R38K it is not going to break the bank either. Big Boys party piece is the fact that they have the biggest motorcycle dealer network in S.A. with around 80 odd dealers countrywide. Possibly why it is one of the best selling quads in S.A. at the moment.
