All of the brakes are the same on Polaris so, if anybody has any ideas that would be great. This is the problem: First off I don;t think my back brakes work very good if at all. When I push down the footbrake nothing happens, this is on a 99 Scrambler 500. Well yesterday when going down a very steep hill, I lost the brake pressure. It just went. I got home and meesed around and found that when I squeezed the brakes the fluid would fill up the small reserve at the back foot brake and overflow through the cap. I messed around some more and found that if I squeeze the brake and push the foot brake down at the same time the brakes work. I can feel the two brake levers working against each other to stop the atv. This is wierd, it can't see any fliud leaking but from the small reserve. If I use the two brake levers at the same time it does not overflow and it stops the quad. Any ideas????

Thanks alot,

Steve

 

Steve,
Split the brakes and be done with it. I did it on my 400 and loved it. Thats also on the project list for the 500. This weekend at Uwharrie I had a problem because of the wonderful one lever brake system. I was trying to climb one of super steep hills on the back side of Daniel that I had no business on. It was one of those "all muscle/ no running start" type climbs. I would have to guess that grade was 60 degrees at times, and right at the top someone had got stuck and dug 2 large potholes. My intention was to straddle the rutts & miss the holes, but it was so steep my front-end was waiving & all 4 tires spinning, my rear-end dropped into the holes. This all of a sudden put the bike at about 80 degrees, and you know what happens next! As I felt the front end coming over I immediately released the trottle and let it roll back a foot or so. I sqeezed the brake ever so slightly...& the front end starts up again. So I let it roll another foot or so....squeeze the brake...and the front end starts up again. I played this game a couple of times. Each time conditions got worse. I realized that my back brakes were killing me and there was no way to stop the bike without flipping it. I ended up letting the bike slowly roll over ( I had 1 knee on the seat, 1 foot on the floor pan) and held the brake and twisted the bike in the air as it came over so it would land on the side and stop, instead of tumbling end over end back down the hill. I was lucky to get out of this situation without hurting myself or the bike, (and luck there was a tree close by to keep me and the bike from sliding all the way down the hill sideways) but seperate front and rear brakes would have been the answer. Luckily I had a friend riding with me that ran up the hill and helped me right side the bike. I could have locked the front brakes and slid down the hill slowly. This was the second time in less than a month that I've seen the bottom of the 500, both cases brake related. Split the brakes!

Jerome Coker
'99 400 & 500 Scrambler

PS, Someone in the forum made the suggestion of turning the floorpans around, great suggestion, I like the feel much better. Takes all of 10 minutes.

 

You talked me into spliting the brakes, that was real hard. I guess that would solve my problem pretty easily. So you like my idea of turning the floorpans around. They do feel alittle better. Gotta get to work, so I'll talk to ya later,

Steve