I had a long trip back to our home base on the Turkey Run. Needless to say, I went through a few too many mudholes and overheated several times (5) on the way back. What should have been a 30 minute ride from the time the overheating started turned into a 4 hour extension. Actually, I had to be towed for the last 4 miles.

When I loaded the Sportsman into the back of the truck, I noticed a long vinyl tube hanging from top of the overflow bottle for the radiator dragging on the ground. There were two tubes, one at the bottom of the resevoir ran back to the radiator neck, the one at the top o the red ap was hanging to the ground. Can anyone tell me if this was connected to something and just came loose or is this a vent tube?

 

Welcome! The bottom hose is the overflow/return line from the radiator.The top hose hooked to the reservoir fill cap is just a vent Polaris added. It just routes up and you can zip tie this hose up.(BUT check on the coolant fill neck to see if it has a place for this hose,some models I believe did!) It actually was added for the purpose of allowing overflow coolant that would at times spew out of the earlier bottles with just a vent cap only, to just go up the tube a little and come back down as the coolant dropped. The big twins would occasionally spew out even when not running hot (at least down here) and rather than have a larger bottle or change the thermostat to allow the fan to kick on quicker,etc they just added a length of hose to the bottle cap. Cheap solution that usually works,but running through mud holes blocking air flow to the radiator causing it to over heat wont stop it from purging out of the tube. Make sure you flush the radiator front and rear especially around the fan area and not a bad idea afterwards to run it without the radiator cap to remove any trapped air until the fan cycles on and off,then top off the radiator coolant and over flow bottle. OPT

 

Wow!! Thanks for the input! I think I may have found a new favorite ATV forum. Thank you very much "old Polaris tech"

 

You will quickly find that OPT is THE MAN

 

Agreed, on other forums this question went unanswered for a few days. Im glad to see this. Im new to owning a 4-wheeler and I know that I will be asking a bunch of questions!!!

 

My 800 also overheats fairly often, but that's because I spend a fair amount of time in mud also. The radiator location design is poor, but I use my front box a LOT so a radiator relocation is not an option. I ended up installing a temp gauge to monitor it better, and hopefully catch it before it gets critical. I also carry a 2 1/2 gallon pressurized water fire extinguisher when I plan to do some heavy mudding. It's a little cumbersome, but it's less cumbersome, and a lot cheaper, than a portable pressure washer. It has a strong enough stream to clean the radiator really well. The down side is that once it is empty, you just can't refill it and go. It needs to be air pressurized. I can usually get 2-3 good cleans before it is empty.

The good thing is that a couple of the other guys have started to carry them also, and at least one guy usually carries a small 12v air compressor. It doesn't fully "charge" the extinguisher, put it puts enough pressure in it to keep using it. We just refill the water from a stream, lake, whatever is close. Between us, we can keep everyone rolling most of the day.

 

i made a homemade trail washer pump to use when we went mudding on my 800's. it's best if you can find a good unning water source right after the mud bath, as the mud will bake right in there hard. i actually had to rremove min once to cleanit w/ a pressure washer as it was baked in so hard.

 

You've been loving a lot of posts lately OPT

 

I usually do not purposely take mine through the deep holes. But as eveyone knows, you cant stay out of it. I was suprised that the fan area was fairly unclogged but my radiator was caked. I ran it on a test run last night and everything is much better. I do have one more question though:

When I first bought this 4-wheeler (2 months ago), when I shut the engine off, the fan would still run until it cooled down. Now, when I shut the engine off the fan to seems to quit also. What would cause this?

 

There can be a lapse in the signal to the fan to shut off. Have had several do this with no adverse effects. On the very early 800's we had to wire in a diode(got em from Radio Shack) on the temp sensor wiring to the sensor to help calibrate the signal better. Polaris engineer told us to do this only on problem machines. Only had to do a couple like this. Think it was a 33 ohm resistor? OPT