Besides a snorkel, what else should i do with my foreman to make it ready for deep water crossings??

 

You have a carb vent line coming from the bottom of your carb. It will need to be lengthened. Dialectric grease on all electrical connections and you might also want to seal up your pull start rope. You can just use an RTV type silicone to seal it. Then if you ever need it, it won't be much of a problem to remove the silicone from around the handle. I would also put a little silicone around both sides of your carb. The clamps hold pretty well. But that isn't somewhere you want water getting. Its just insurance. This is all I can think of but I'm sure others willl add to it.
Good luck.

 

You said the snorkel so I'm not sure if you mean everything or not.. you have 2 vent tubes coming out of the top of the carbuerator on these, you cant miss them. Take them two and coming them together with a 3-way T and run one vacuum hose out and up. Then you have a fan breather line (clear), front diff, rear diff, rear brakes. You can get one 5-way T to connect those four lines and run one out, all these tubes are currently attached to the frame under the nose area of the gas tank. When you remove the gas tank look towards the front plastic in the middle of the frame brackets and you will see them. Then you have the gas cap hose. you can either join it and run a hose out, or completely replace the hose and run it all the way out.
Hope that helps. I just did all this on my 06.

 

Alright, this stuff applies to my 1998 Forman

First, take apart all electrical connections and apply di-electric grease (permatex stuff at crappy tire is good) I usually work it in with a tooth brush, you only need a coating, not enough to make it hard to plug back together.

Most important one to do is the spark plug boot and the 2 ignition wires on the coil.

Right now your limitation for water crossing is your intake snorkle (which on mine sat right about the word Forman on the gas tank, and the vent lines, which on mine came up to the steering stem.

I custom made a full snorkle for mine out of ABS pipe (which is what the expensive triangle ATV one is made from). I installed a threaded coupler at the front rack so I can use a short snorkle for regular riding (still 3" higher then stock) and an 18" for deep stuff. I extended all my vent lines up to the top of the top headlight. My bike wont go deeper then this...mainly cause I wont ride it there!!! LOL....but it floats before that anyway with 27" tires.!!! LOL

One thing to check is the crank case vent. Mine comes straight out of the engine goes to the bottom of the airbox. Problem with this is, anymore then 1.5 " of water in the airbox and it will run straight down into the crank case. From what I've read, people take off this line and make a longer one to loop up over the carbeurator intake boot and back to the airbox to make an upside down air trap....vent still works as intended but it prevents the chance of water getting into the motor that way.

I think you have disc brakes, so I'lll leave out drum brake maintenance. Basically I've had very little trouble with my drums in water.

Anything you have in the storage compartments should be in water proof containers. I have 2 tool kits in tupperware containers that are also covererd in duct tape to prevent cracking.

Antiseize is your freind on wheel studs and other bolts that you ever might want to remove. I also coated over the castle nut and the end of the axle...if that rusts you'll have a mess when you have to change wheel bearings. Most have factory lock tite which is fine until you take it apart....after that re=apply it to prevent them from seizing. Fender bolts should be gone over....I had to buy new ones for mine. Mine were the old crappy phillips head style, my new ones are hex head.

That's about it for now....key to it is preventative maintenance

 

This is the reason that I would like to have my foreman ready for "the drink"...

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/4...erstuckcz0.jpg

My brother took my bike through the mud hole (located in the pic on the right side of the big red) and sped right through it with no trouble. On the way back from our run that day I wanted to be a little less cowardly and I took my time and navagated my way through the same hole. Apparently he was able to jump/float over the deepest spot while I dropped right into it. It gave me a bit of a fright knowing that most of my brand new bike was submerged, I knew I wasn't doing it any harm but i still had that funny feeling that something may be taking on some water. So I want to be sure for the next time that I can handle some deep mud/water holes without worry.

I already have all of my electrical connections coated with di-electric grease, that's something I do anyhow for preservation. I also use loctite anti-seize on everything that I remove and replace, unless it should require the oppisite.

Wouldn't the recoil starter case have some kind of a drain hole? Is there a need to seal the case up with silicone if it does have a drain hole?

I'm going out now to purchase some hose and connections to extend my vent lines.

What about my warn winch? since most times that's my ticket out of bad stucks is their anything i can do, besides grease on the electrical connections, to protect that or did warn do a good job of that for me?

Thanks a million for the help!!!

 

On your pull start you do need to silicone the drain wholes and rope handle. My buddy burned the rings out of his rancher not siliconing the pull start and thats not cheap.

Also you can buy a cover on highlifter.com to cover up your pull start all together thats what I would do. but you wont be able to pull start your foreman anymore.

 

definatly silicone pull starter i just spent 400$ fixing my piston rings and cylinder! the only good part is that i got to bore it out! it still sucks being out of commision, for a few weeks!just about done now! water+oil= jacked up motor! though i was driving a banshee the way it was smoking![img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]