I recently had the same problem with my 03 4x4 Rancher. My daughter was riding it and it ran out of gas and then when I put it on the reserve and started it up the shifter indicator was blinking and it would not shift when using the ES so I got the manual shifter that Honda provides(?) and then brought it back to the truck to call it a day. The next day in the afternoon when I got home after work I started her up and wow it shifted fine. I don't know what happened.. I did ask the dealer about it and he said something about reseting, but I did not have to do that. I rode her for about 4 hrs this last weekend and it ran good no problems. I am going to take her in on the next service and see what might have happened. Well just my .02 worth.

Aloha.

 

depending on the year there was a recall on the shift plate , its either bent or broke....take it to honda to see if ur machine is covered. mine did the same thing and was covered by honda ....mines a 2001 but there were a couple years recalled

 

hey my friend had the same prob they said they had to put a new gear or something like it

 

yep they are both in the shop now both getting something replaced....same part....i'll let ya know what it was when we get em back....

 

My father had the same problem with his 2004 Rancher ES 4X4. After it happened to him twice he took it back to the dealer. The could find nothing wrong with it. I got a chance to ride it 2 weeks ago and it happened to me. We had to manually shift it back to Neutral in order to get it working again. A couple weeks later he was out on a long ride and it happened to him 8 times. Rocking the quad or shutting down then restarting were quick fixes to get the quad to shift again. He took it back to the dealer last week and said fix it, there has to be something wrong. He was told there were three items that could be the culprit. 1. The angle sensor. 2. The chip that controls the shifting. 3. The wiring for the ES. All items checked out good. The service department did say there was a service bulletin out for the female end of the wiring plug. I don't have the bulletin number. The service department checked out the plug, crimped the connections tighter and put it all back together. So far it has not had another problem, but he hasn't ridden it much the past couple of days.

I just purchased a 2005 Rancher ES last week and so far it is doing great.