Thanks Matt. The dealer says "has drag from the transmission and the torque converter." My problem with the brakes is that one of them seem sure footed, compared to a car. Maybe I need to slam them harder?
Some machines have better brakes than others with the standard being hydraulic disc brakes. I see the Mule only has hydraulic drum brakes. I know with Arctic Cat products, they come with a coating over the discs that keep them from rusting up in the crates. You have to either burnish the brakes to get them to stop well or drive them through some mud to wear it off. Until that point they don't stop all that well. With that being said, I see the top speed of the Mule is governed at 25 mph. For that type of speed and its designed use, I would think the brakes would be adequate.
As far as the engine braking goes, I have read a few reviews that mention the lack of engine braking. I even looked at the parts diagrams to see if I can see anything indicating that there was, and I saw nothing. Again, since it only goes 25 they probably felt that it doesn't need it. Most of the engine brake designs don't work very well at extremely slow speeds and the ones that do become annoying because it's hard to drive at slow speeds smoothly. I would ask the salesman to explain exactly how their engine brake works to see if he is giving you a line.
What is the story on reliability? There is fair bit of forum chatter relative to new gasoline gumming up faster. My unit will be sitting around for 2-4 weeks at a time and may not even finish a tank of gas all season! I will put preservative in it. Should it work well then? If not, then my only option will be the electric Ranger EV which so far, I have not found even one to test drive.
As far as reliability goes with the Mule, I'm not sure. I was not a big fan of the Kawasaki built engine that Arctic Cat used for a few years in their ATV. I also hear some pretty bad things about their ATVs in general, but the Mule may be a completely different story. It's been around for a long time and I would think that they would be pretty solid.
We have up to 10% ethanol here in our regular gas and premium usually has none added. To be completely honest, we don't do anything to our gas in the machines we have at work for storage. We only add a fuel additive or stabilizer because people request it. I find that the shelf life of gas in this area is around 6 months to a year.
Since the Mule is fuel injected, I wouldn't worry about gumming up the injectors. It usually takes at least 10 years before I see any kind of problems. I guess I would treat one tank of fuel a year with something like Sea Foam or Chevron with Techron fuel system cleaner. I've found that the Chevron stuff works great.