About a year ago I was doing a routine oil change on my 01 Recon that was sitting (maybe only ridden a few times) for 4 or 5 years. The drain plug felt frozen on there, so I use one of my longer 3/8ths ratchets and broke it loose no problem...
...only there was a problem. It broke piece of the crank case off with it. I really can't figure out how this happened, the two metals must have fused to a degree. It was a pretty large chunk taken out to the point where you can see almost all the threads on the plug if you threaded it in to what was left of the hole.

I was hoping I could TIG weld the drain plug back in, but then I realized that this wasn't an oil pan but actually part of the crank case. Taking it off would be a huge pain in the *** and I'd never be able to get it clean enough otherwise to TIG it. I ended up JB welding the drain plug in using enough of the stuff to also fill the gap left behind by the broken piece. I drove it a handful of times and it is holding up, but I am a little worried about it.

Aside from having to use something to suck the oil out of the crankcase from the fill hole on my next oil change, the whole reason I loved this quad was because after 13 years of being put through hell and back it never let me down. I'd love to fix it up a bit, but what's the point now if I may loose all my oil out on a trail somewhere if the JB weld fails.

Has anyone ever had this happen to them? How did you fix it? I'm no quad mechanic, but from the diagrams I have seen it appears you damn near have to tear apart the whole motor to replace that part. I think at that point I'd rather find a fresher, complete motor and dump it in.

 

Same thing happened to my friends 2005 500 Foreman. Honda has a very weak white metal area around its drain plug on many models.

He ended up getting the drain plug hole welded close with aluminum welding and now when he changes oil he has a syphon hose hand pump that remove the oil from the filler hole instead.

 

I guess tigging it someday is still an option for peace of mind... The metal needs to be extremely clean to TIG and being this is an oil pan with oil residue behind it, the only way I can see this happening without taking the part off is to maybe turn the quad upside down and then spray the crap out of the area with carb cleaner (upside down so it takes the oil away from the welding area, not pooling up and drying back ontop of it). I guess it's possible though... probably worth a shot to give a sense of permanence to the repair. I only have MIG welders now but was thinking of purchasing a TIG eventually now that I don't work for a shop that has one anymore.

One of the things I have loved about this quad over the years is knowing that it won't let me down. This is probably one of the only real flaws in design that I have noticed with this quad, everything else I have pushed well past the limits, neglected, beat on etc... and it still keeps ticking. this one thing is always in the back of my mind if I wanted to take it out somewhere for a long trip though, wouldn't be fun if the JB weld failed and I lost all my oil in the middle of nowhere lol

 

We had a 250 crankcase rotted through on a farm bike that had spent it's early life on a farm next to the sea. I had taken the engine out to find why oil was seeping from the underside of the engine so turned it upside down and took it to a TIG welder. No problems since. We also had two Cockle pickers this spring with 450s that had rotted through under the rear output shaft oil seal, couldn't weld them, and the engine mounting bolts were too rusted to move anyway so just filled the holes with epoxy, they are OK at the moment.