The best thing that you can do is read the owner's manual, for maintenance. I didn't mean to be so hard on salesmen, hehe, and most of the dealers that I've been to have been very helpful. Like I said, talking to a mechanic will teach you more than talking to a salesman, 90% of the time. The most dangerous sales people that I've seen in action, actually were hot looking women, wearing short skirts, lots of cleavage and they like to keep touching you. My local Dodge dealer had a pair that worked together, sold lots of cars until the Mercedes dealer got them away. They didn't know 1 end of a car from another.

 

A sales person's best customer is the one that tells them I don't know much about these things.

 

I just completed the 25 hours maintenance on my new ATV. The owner's manual gave me a good description of how things were done. I found working on an ATV is challenging in that there is a lot of machinery in a small space. You pretty much have to take the plastic body parts off to gain access to maintenance items.

Changing oils, lubing the throttle cable, cleaning the air and CVT inlet filters, greasing the driveshaft and suspension pivots does not need a $100 and hour service shop. I enjoy working in my garage on this and that. Some others would rather not.

However, I will need my good dealer for a warranty claim, or CVT malfunction, or power steering trouble, or some electronic gremlin, or even engine valve adjustment. I don't have the knowledge or tools to tackle that type of repair.

David

 

That's why they only put very little info in owners manuals so you will go to the dealer. Get the service manual and you can adjust your own valves and do other maintenance and repairs and save yourself some good cold cash and bypass the dealer.

 

Contact your local club and talk to some of their members. It sounds like your salesman may have been fresh on the floor and not had a good understanding. See if their is a local shop that has rentals that you can take out for a real ride. You can't go wrong with a can am they are more expensive but they also have the best warranty in the business. Their machines are also im my opinion built much better than anything else.. Im riding a cat but next machine will be a can am. Also can am has more HP than its competitors in each class..

 

Hats off to you for tackling your own service. In my opinion its always best to have the first service done by the shop. Especially with can am and their visco lock a trained tech may spot something you are unaware of. If something goes wrong they can give you a hard time.. Hopefully you kept all your receipts for products purchased?

 

That's generally true, within each class, but the Scrambler XP 1000 has exactly the same horsepower as the Outlander DPS 1000R, Outlander XT 1000R, Outlander XT-P 1000R, Outlander Mossy Oak Hunting Edition 1000R, Outlander Max XT 1000R, Outlander XT-P 1000R, Outlander Max Limited, Outlander X mr 1000R, and Renegade X mr 1000R, and the Sportsman XP 1000 has one horsepower more than any of them.

 

Hi zrock: There is a distinct advantage in having a factory trained tech service your machine. They have seen and ridden many of them, and can spot trouble much better than us hobbyists. I did talk to my dealer's service manager and was assured doing my own work was no problem concerning the warranty. Do you suppose his fingers were crossed behind his back?

Interesting enough the dealer was quite adamant that a specific oil be used in their two stroke snowmobile engines. The design of the engine required it. But there was no such talk about the Rotax ATV engines.

I did some warranty analysis work for a hydrostatic transmission maker many years ago. We knew the weaknesses of the units. We tore down several of them every day. We could easily spot a bad customer action that caused the problem, like the wrong oil, like contaminated oil, like too much heat. Warranty denied, and we kept the oil sample and parts as evidence. Customers were still mad as heck. Can't win.

David

 

Lol... ya I could see a dealer doing that.... not all dealers are bad.... as long as u keep all receipts you are good to go

 

Some owner's manuals have blank pages in the back where you can write down what service you did and how many miles and hours you had at the time.