As I have said I HAVE to tinker with stuff. I have begun to look into why the steering parts, ie the ball joints, and tierod ends appear to be wearing out so fast.

I took an apparent worn tierod end apart and found there were NO worn parts. The end itself showed no wear, neither did the ballstud, or the plastic bushing the ballstud rides on. The problem was the stamped steel "cap". To be exact the area where the end and the cap look to be stamped together. The edge of the end looks to be stamped and formed to capture the cap after the ballstud and plastic bushing are installed. The "lip" is VERY thin, and weak. It began to split apart and THAT is where the play/slop is coming from. The cap is no longer fully supporting the ballstud.

I removed the left upper control arm to see how the arm pivots where it is bolted to the frame, and to see why there was so much slop in the upper balljoint. The control arms where they attach to the frame have a hollow tube with a ball in the middle, and that has a outer race it pivots in. The ball and tube are made from one piece. It is held in the arm by a c-clip at each end. It was packed with grease, and has a seal at each end. There is some play in my quad where the control arms attach to the frame, and I found out why. The outer race in both mounts for that upper control arm are cracked in two pieces. I cleaned them out, and repacked them with grease for now. I'm going to go thru the 3 other arms as soon as I can.

As far as the upper balljoint, I did not take it apart, but it was the same thing as the tierod end. NO wear, but the lip was split pretty bad. I used a set of vise clamps to push it back together, and for now, put several tack welds on it. As soon as I did this there was NO slop in the ball joint. Now for the lower control arm....

Just posting this as kind of an FYI on what to look for, and maybe if we all post up what we have had to fix, and how it's put together, we can save each other some time and headache.

 

Good job, Tell me, being that I have 4 of these it does not excite me what so ever to tear each one apart an perform all this. Do you think other then sloppiness will the parts completely give out and break and be unsafe? I don't mind working on these but with 4 units it takes a couple hours of preventive maintenance every time we go out riding so extra work is just not too fun.
I hope Jetmoto will step up and supply us with new upgraded parts to replace these?????

 

I agree, Jetmoto should step up and provide upgraded replacement parts for things that are breaking so soon, and so easily.

EDIT: And it looks like they are going to be doing that soon. Looks like Jetmoto is really one of the good companies out there. I don't think there was ever any doubt about raceway [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

-JNY

 

00XJ great job! I have read this and so has Jetmoto! We are always looking for input and are trying our best to make everything 100%. It is customers like you that helped us get to this point! We will let the factory know about this and see what kind of upgrade we can come with. All post never go unread by me [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img] I might not post to all of them but I do read them all carefully!

Thanks again 00XJ!

John. Raceway ATV

 

outofline,

The only area I see that could fail totally is if the lip on the tierod end, or ball joint completely came apart and the cap came off, but anything's possible. The rod end, or ball joint would collapse on itself...if that makes any sense. IMO the worst case senaro would be with the tierods. The tierod coming apart... NOT fun! Since the weight is on the balljoints, that is where I would look first at the lip area. I plan to watch these two areas closely from now on.

I took the other side upper control arm off today. While I didn't take the frame ends apart, the races looked to be cracked too. I cleaned them out, and repacked them with grease. I "fixed" the upper balljoint by finding a socket at work slightly bigger diameter than the ballstud and putting it onto the cap, and using the press at work. Very little pressure was necessary to "form" the cap to remove any play in the balljoint. This joint was not split anywhere around the lip. I'll take it out for a spin tomorrow.

John,

Happy I could help. I appreciate the excellent service you at Raceway, and JetMoto have given me, and again happy I could repay you in some small way. I'll admit I was somewhat worried about buying a "Chinese" quad in the beginning, thinking I might be left hanging with a pile of junk. But obviously that is not the case.

 

Well I took it out and rode it today, the steering is much more precise. Another thing that helped the steering is, I bought a wider set of handlebars at the local Yamaha dealer. It gives you more leverage to turn the wheels. And compared to the Polaris it will turn on a dime. It's almost scarey quick to turn.

I like my Polaris, but the 250 is a blast to ride too.

 

00XJ, any pic's? I have thought about replacing the handle bars also but have kind of gotten use to these!

 

Never posted a pic here, can it be done thru photobucket like most other forums? I'll see what I can do tomorrow. I'll also post up the measurements on the new bars, it's dark here and the quad is put up.

They were only $21, and are painted red, but they came in silver, black, and I think blue. The "pod" in the middle of the stock handlebars fit perfect under the crossbar on the new set. That is the only place I was worried about fitment seeing that 7/8" bars are pretty much the norm.

 

In your "My Page" here it will host any 640x480 or smaller Jpeg!

 

Here are some pic of the new handlebars.




Also the oil cooler guard I fabed up.


And a pic of my son and the atv's at The Badlands here in Indiana.