I was out on a trail ride (30 miles from camp / Piute trail system-Utah) and came across a high mountain lake shore that was just begging me to ride in the water a little bit. To make a long story short, I went too deep and my quad slid under up to the handle bar clamp. As soon as the exhaust was going under, I shut the engine down immediately. I got winched out within three minutes and after getting out, found out my motor was locked up solid. This was bad, because I only had 45 hours on the quad. Here is what I had to do to get is running again:

1-Pull the spark plugs and hand crank the engine with the pull cord. It seemed that only the rear cylinder had water in it and it pumped out a large amount.
2-Pulled the air cleaner element and wrung out the excess water and air dried.
3-The bike then started and made loud swishing noises from the clutch cover. Found out the clutch cover cavity will hold about three gallons of water.
4-Attempted to remove the clutch cover bolts with the 12mm wrench in the tool kit. Impossible to remove two of the bolts with the open end wrench or a closed end wrench due to clearance. I had a Leather man tool with the vice grip head and was able to clamp on to them lenght-wise with that successfully. I drained all the water out ran the engine at idle for about 5 minutes to dry out the clutch.
5-After the above, the oil began to turn milky indicating oil contamination. We had no other oil between our group and at that point I decided to not attempt to run the engine until I could drain all the contaminated oil. I was going to drain the oil, but the 10mm open end wrench would not remove the four 10mm bolts holding on the skid plate which must be removed in order to use the 17mm open end wrench needed to remove the oil drain plug.
6-I was concerned that the rear end and front differential had water in them also, but could not check due to a lack of a 19mm wrench.
7-My wife pulled me back, to camp and I changed the oil 4 times before it came clean. There was not much water that reached the crankcase, but better to be safe than sorry. I also found no water contamination in the front and rear end which was good. I also regreased the clutch shafts and made sure there was not remaining water in the clutch cover assembly. Lastly, I removed the starter pull cord cover and dried up the water. There is a small drain hole in the bottom of the cover, but there was still water left behind.

<U>LESSONS:</U>

A-Don't drive in the freakin lake in the first place.
B-Carry a 1/4" ratchet, 1/4" 6" extension, 10,12 and 14mm sockets. This will allow easy, fast removal of the clutch cover to drain excessive water and allow removal of the skid pans as well as any of the common bolts on the bike. I also replaced the OEM 10 /12mm open end wrenches with craftsman wrenches. (These fit easily inside the OEM tool kit pouch in addition to the existing tools)
C-Carry a short 17mm box end wrench. A shorty 17mm X 19mm double box end wrench would be ideal.
D-A long strap is comforting to have. I had a 40' 1" nylon web strap and without this, the dust would have been murder on the long pull home. I was able to have my wife ride on one side of the road and I could stay on the other side during the pull which minimized the dust.
E-If you go out on a long ride with multiple people, have each person carry a quart of oil. I would have had to carry at least five quarts of oil to flush the water out while on the trail even if I had carried the above tools.
F-I think it is key if you get water in the quad, to make sure and ride it thorougly as soon as possible after cleaning the water out to make sure the heat dries everything out. If I left the bike the way it was and took it to the dealer to repair, I think I would be much worse off.
G-Don't yell at your wife about how she does not pull you steady on your 30 mile ride back. This is not a positive sex life enhancing experience.

 

That's some valuable info right there, especially the last part about yelling at
your wife!!! LMAO!!! Great post.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

 

Hey scott if you want to go in a lake buy a boat or a raft LOL. Glad your quad is ok. How was the trip????

 

Piute trail was fantastic. We spent three days there based at Marysvale. The variety of terrain is great with lots of wide open spaces. I would recommend it to anyone.

 

Great Post .... thanks for the tips.... ALL of them [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

 

Good post Toner!

I think I am going to fill up my tool box with all the tools you suggested. I was planning on looking over the machine and making a list of extra usefull tools but looks like you saved me some time.

Great post!

 

I just had my P650 up the to the headlights in a some water this past weekend. I am pretty sure my exhuast was under water. Shouldnt it be ok unless you let off the gas? Cause as long as your on it your blowing your exhuast out which should keep out the water. Am I wrong on this? I'd like to know so I dont do it again if its gonna kill my quad. There were a couple other machines doing it too that sit a little lower than mine.

 

gtchief:

You are okay if you submerge the exhaust. It's good to stay on the throttle, but I've had mine under and it never stalled or sucked water in. You are fine as long as you don't get above the front rack, thats when the air intake and clutch intake will start sucking water...not good.

go to the videos on nyroc's website (http://atv.dnsalias.com/videoview.cgi) and check out the video entitled water wheelie. Thats me and thats about as deep as you can go without having a true snorkled intake. If it gets that deep, just wheelie it out, the water against the skid plate, and tires spinning water up against the fenders keeps the quad up very, very easy.