Hello all, my names Matt and I'm new to the site. I'm really hoping someone can help me figure this out.. I have a 2004 Sportsman 700 carb model and I'm having trouble getting it to start. I bought the quad a month or two ago and it ran absolutely fine. The guy who owned it before me plowed his driveway with it and then would park it the majority of the year. It has 900 miles on it. It used to start on a quarter crank with the choke pulled. Now, it won't crank at all. I replaced the battery and solenoid and it started right up. I thought my problem was fixed. I wasn't so lucky. I then removed the ignition switch and tested continuity of the wires going to the switch, (which is the on/off & momentary start switch) and everything checked out fine. I figured it must be the switch, so I got a new one. STILL NOTHING! If I remove the switch from the wiring harness and hot wire it, it fires right up on a quarter crank and runs fine. I'm half temped to wire a toggle (on/off) switch up and put a push button momentary start switch on. Has anyone had any issues like this before? Any ideas? Please help, it's getting very frustrating!
Thank you

 

Main thing I'd like to know is if you have a Ducati ignition or the updated Kokusan ignition before you go any further. Pop the front panel,if it's Ducati the cdi and coil will be together. If Kokusan there will be a separate cdi and coil.Some early models had the troublesome Ducati ignition. Change over was after 2/23/03 build date.

 

When standing at the front of the quad, the coil is to the right of the CDI box, so I assume it's the Kokusan updated ignition. If I remove the ignition switch from the wiring harness I can use paper clips to complete the circuit, start it right up and it'll run just fine. If it was the coil or CDI it wouldn't stay running right? No spark? Something I left out of the original post is the gauge cluster has never worked as long as I've owned it. Could that have anything to do with the key not working?

 

With two switches doing the same thing,I'd still say a wiring problem or a pin in the ignition connector harness may have moved not be making contact with the ignition switch pins if you can use a paper clip to jump them to start the atv. Plus simple things like wiring shorts at the headlight yellow wire could cause problems like this along with the left control switch.Pull the black kill circuit wire from the cdi and see if the switch works. If it does problem could be in the left control switch/on off wiring or in the internal kill circuit of the cdi module itself.The manual has a pin tracer that should be able to help on this plus a pin tracer on the speedo itself. Plus has a lot of other trouble shooting checks that can help.
2004 Polaris Sportsman 700 Service Manual PDF Download