I've started on a project of sorts... I bought a Predator at an insurance salvage sale and am looking to get it back to running shape for kids to ride around farm. It was of course abused: switch drilled, body panels all damaged or missing, electrical items damaged, all tires flat, and etc. The positives are that the frame, controls, seat, rims, engine all appear to be in decent shape.

The first things I did was to get a battery on it to see if it would at least crank without trying to fully start it. I couldn't get any neutral light to show. After I was sure I learned the shift pattern and it was in neutral, I decided to remove what body panels where there to look at wiring. I found one set of wires that was supposed to be connected to the battery's positive post that had the crimped on connector broke. When I touched that wire to the positive post, I had a neutral light and then it would crank without me letting it start. Now I'm at the stage of draining the gas and oil. The gas was stale and there was only about 4 oz of oil in the crankcase. The magnet on the oil drain plug didn't have any shaving on it so that was a good sign. When I pulled the filter however, in the bottom of the housing there were some real small metal pieces, bad sign. I know the unit has some fluid leaks b\c there were leaked fluids under it at the sale. Hoping that is the reason the oil was so low.

I've ordered a oil filter, oil filter seal, oil plug seal, and a spark plug online. Going to change those out and check coolant levels before going any further and spending any more money. Trying to be careful to not spend to much before I can determine if it's basically sound. What I really could use is a repair manual, either after market or factory if anyone has access one. Polaris has a good parts diagram online, but I don't have access to it when I'm out in the garage. I'm a novice at this and any advise is appreciated.

 

Welcome to the forum! Repair manual is a good idea and sounds like you either have a direct short (or corrosion) in the starter control switch or the solenoid may have shorted out with current going straight through to the starter,have had this happen before,but try tapping on it first and check the connections to see if it helps . Could be just sticking. OPT

 

Thanks for the quick reply. Whenever my wife lets me out to play with it again, I plan to swap the stuff I talked about in the previous post and give her a crank. I saw a previous post by you about service manuals. http://forums.atvconnection.com/pola...ml#post3096580 I just emailed partshark for one. See you are from North Texas. I'm from South Texas around Victoria.

 

Heard their server crashed from another member and a lot of manuals went down with it,but they may be up and running again? Give em a shot! OPT

 

Oh, bummer. Here's hoping I'll get it with some luck.

 

old polaris tech:

Just got a reply from Partshark saying exactly what you told me. I guess I'm going to hold off buying a manual until I can get done with what I plan on doing right now.

Thx

 

I've found a 2003 service manual and my parts are suppose to arrive today. Hopefully the 2003 and 2004 are fairly similar? Now when my wife give's me some garage time, we'll see what happens.