2010 Yamaha Raptor Project ATV Photo Gallery

DTR Racing considers the Raptor 700R one of the greatest platforms of all time for a dune ATV. We'd have to agree.

We left our 2010 Yamaha Raptor 700R SE sport quad in the capable hands of DTR Racing to see what they could do with a Stage 3 project build. Read the full build in our 2010 Yamaha Raptor Project ATV.

2010 DTR Racing Yamaha Raptor 700R Project ATV Dyno Graph

Cresting Banshee Hill in a fourth-gear wheelie on stock tires was enough to impress our tester.

We especially liked that the pre-filter was water-repellant, which made us less nervous about splashing through errant puddles.

2010 Yamaha Raptor Project ATV

Things only got better once we installed a set of rear paddle tires.

The Fox Float Airshox were a bonus and wound up being our tester's favorite attribute.

The dirt bike world has been used to 50 HP for some time now, but not necessarily the ATV world. Our DTR machine cranked out 53.2 HP at 6200 rpm.

The fox shocks craved to be hammered through the rough terrain and whoops of the sand dunes,

The modifications starts with a Fuel Customs intake system with custom airbox, and ends with the Curtis Sparks Racing full-system exhaust

With the extra grunt and confidence in the suspension, our tester was ripping one-wheeled wheelies at every chance.

The extra 8.5 horsepower is a gain of 19%. Torque jumped by over 17%.

The stainless header and aluminum can not only increase performance, but they resist the negative effects of salty air and sandblasting. The Sparks unit is a seven-pound system which has the ability to install optional spark arrestor screens an quite inserts.

We left all the paperwork and tools in the toolbox when we dropped off the quad, so they mounted the unit on the exterior. However, they recommended that it be placed inside, and we quickly took their advice before it fell out the bottom of the open airbox.

DTR Racing proved that with some simple and commonplace upgrades, the Yamaha Raptor 700R wakes up with healthy improvements.

. Even though we used the Raptor in the dunes and trails at the Oregon Coast, the nice thing about this Stage 1 kit is that it’s really designed to be an all-around performance boost.

Our photographer got an up-close view of the DTR machine.

It should be pretty clear that the DTR bike is a huge improvement over stock. It’s hard to individualize each item because we sampled the mods as a performance package.

We spent time hitting some big air for the camera and were never disappointed with the ability to absorb big landings.

Moist sand conditions and abundant power were perfectly capable of managing without paddles.

Cutting out large portions of the box allow unrestricted flow to the filter. Of course, with a big hole chopped out of the airbox, the Fuel Customs filter and intake system was subject to even more sand, dirt and dust than usual.

The Raptor doesn’t rev like 450 sport quads, but the amount of torque makes up for it. This quad loves to be short-shifted.

Even though the dyno curves are very similar, on the sand it felt like the DTR machine had a bigger mid-range punch and revved a bit higher.