Before you try anything adventurous with your new four-wheeler, take sometime to get trained on how to use it. An ATV is a different kind of vehicle from a car or a truck and you need to have some exposure to how the machine handles especially in an off road situation. Also, take the time to take the ATV into "tame" off road situations and get to know it well. Better to have a problem with your four-wheeler a half mile from your home in a field where help can reach you than to get stranded in some dangerous, remote location.



It will be costly to buy high quality tires for that ATV especially if you take our advice and keep a second set on hand at all times. But considering what you are asking those tires to do, its worth it to invest in the best tires you can get so that when you are out there in the wilderness with your ATV, there is no question that those tires can take care of you.

The four-wheeler should also be built to operate at a much reduced power and challenge level. This means the child's ATV or even the teenagers version of the four-wheeler will not be so powerful that they youngster could lose control of the vehicle easily leading to a nasty accident. But the most important thing your child needs when he or she is learning to operate an ATV is teaching. Under no conditions should he or she take that ATV into unknown territory or difficult terrain. Driving around a vacant lot in the neighborhood is plenty. Then as you teach your child how to operate that machine, you can slowly increase the challenge as the common sense of how to drive a four-wheeler responsibly begins to become evident in the way your son or daughter drives their very own ATV.

Getting a four-wheeler for your teenager takes more than just putting out the chunk of cash it takes to buy it. When you put a big bow on that ATV to have it under the Christmas tree or to give to him or her for a birthday gift, there is a lot of preparation you must do for this moment and plenty of parenting work to be done before you cut that youngster loose with such a powerful machine.

Of course, everything about the ATV is built for this kind of demand. The shocks, the undercarriage, the brakes, the axils and every other component of that four-wheeler is designed to be able to handle any conceivable terrain without difficulty. You will think about that engineering when the ride gets rough as you take that ATV into some really rough and unsettled terrain. You want that four-wheeler to take that ground like an invading tank and those tires should be tough as tank treads to live up to that expectation.

Also, be aware of the fit of the four-wheeler to your youngster's size. To operate an ATV, the youth should be able to easily manage the steering and other controls and to access the readings that they need to drive their ATV responsibly. This may call for getting some measurements before you give the vehicle to your youth. But better to get them in on the surprise than to get them an ATV that is not comfortable for him or her to operate. This is both an ease of use issue and a safety issue.