Article by John Arens

We love the freedom of winding through the trails, cresting a huge dune, or crossing a moose marsh on an ATV, but the ability to haul tons of gear, a passenger or two, and to venture deep into the woods makes Side X Side vehicles truly amazing. For packing gear into the hunting or fishing camp, or simply moving stuff around the job site or farm, there are very few vehicles that are as easy to operate, and can perform half as well. Just like with cars or trucks, however, nearly everyone likes to make a vehicle their own by customizing it. Some do it strictly for looks, some do it for work, but most people customize their vehicle for a little of both. We’ve even found one guy who installed a 4 wheel steering kit, and then painted his Yamaha Rhino pink just to stand out when rock crawling! We will never paint one pink, but recently we busted open our big tool box and reworked our factory Rhino, to add a bunch of parts to make it our own.

We had several goals for our Rhino makeover. First and foremost it is still a work vehicle, and we wanted to retain and enhance those capabilities. We’re on tight trails and in the woods quite often, so better protection was important, and since we would be driving it in the winter, we needed to make sure the driver and passenger were sheltered from the elements a little better, as well. If we could meet those goals and make it look cool too, that would be a bonus!

There are many companies offering all manner of bolt on/weld on/tape on/parts for Side X Sides these days. The trouble is we’re really not familiar with most of them, and it has definitely been our experience that trying to assemble mismatched parts from several different companies rarely works as well as one hopes. We’ve also seen parts (and for that matter vehicles) that there is no way we can recommend, and we certainly don’t want anything to do with those.

One company that has been building quality parts for some time is Seizmik, and when the Side X Side market began to expand, they recognized a need for quality accessories that could both enhance the vehicles capabilities and offer the driver and passenger a little more comfort, as well. It was time to try out some of their parts on our Rhino!