The scoop.

Jammed on my rear brakes the other day only to hear a bunch of crashing and grinding come out of the front of the machine.

Now, I have a rear while drive 4x4! Great. . .

Anyway, if you follow the drive shaft under the front of the engine, there is a point where the larger shaft heading to the rear couples with a smaller shaft heading to the front. When you sping the rear tires (entire ATV off the ground) the rear tires spin but the front stay still (although they move just fine if you spin them by hand). The rear turns while the front shaft doesn't and you can hear some grinding and gurrlging the whole time coming from where the two shafts meet.

1) Does this description make any sense to anyone?
2) Is this a common mishap?
3) Is this fixable by me with some metric tools and a small knowledge of ATV's (mostly limited to what I know about 2 stroke snowmobile engines - Rotax to be exact)?
4) Am I better off taking it to my Honda dealer?

Thank You!
Kurt

 

I will admit that i have never been around a Foreman 400, but since no one has posted for you yet, I'll try to help. If this is a point where two shafts meet, Either butting up to eachother, or sliding in and out, there are usually splines involved. Judging by your description you stripped the splines off the driveline. When you "jammed on the brakes" were you on pavement? That may have been enough to push it over the edge. Generally, something has to get loose, or an immense load has to be dumped on a driveline for it to fail. Is any component of the drivetrain loose? Anyway, the driveline will sometimes come loose and it will gradually start chewing splines off. As you drive, the splines will gradually grind off from one end to the other, and all it takes is a good load to finish the job. The other option is that you dumped a huge load on it all of a sudden, which I doubt. Huge loads have the effect of twisting an entire driveline, if splines dont fail first. Think of twisting a piece of licorice the long way - that is what happens to your driveline. We have a couple pieces of farm equipment that are a driveline hell, and I have had both of these things happen to me. On a quad, I doubt it is common. You are probably best off to take it to the dealer, judging from your message you are not very mechanically inclined. If you do fix it yourself, make sure you line up the u joints correctly before putting it together, (they should be at 90 degrees to eachother) and that the drivelines arent bent. Things will not come apart/go together very easily if drivelines are bent. Bent drivelines tend to take out more bearings/u-joints. Bend over, lube up, and take it to the dealer.

 

Thanks for the info. Your analysis sounds right on. Still not sure If I'm going to attempt this repair on ym own and shell out the cash . . . I suppose I'll have to take it apart to see what's broken anyway before I hand it over to my dealer so I might as well take stab at it. Hopefully it's not too painful . . . I'll give an update when I actually rip it apart.

Thank You!
Kurt