Look up above your red circles. Appears to be the awd connector for one side. Should have a gray and brown or brown/white wire. The other connector may be behind the main harness. Sometimes about as easy to trace the wires leading from the struts up into the the wiring to find the connectors.

 

Thought I was going to be in business... I cut the 2 brown wires, butt connected those resulting 4 wires with a ground to the coil - but still no 4wd light.

 

And wow - wires of that size on a 4-wheeler? I was really careful not to break those wires since they are so tiny.

 

Small wires indeed,size of telephone wires.Check that you have voltage on the gray wires. If not,place the gear selector in low range and see if the awd light works.If it does,could be that funky gear selector switch that give people problems.It sends the power to the awd switch.Ways to work around that as many have done.Here's a video on an older one,but jumping the switch gray wire to a red/white(powered only with key on) can bypass this high dollar gear switch if that's the problem.
Switch is item#15 in the thumb nail pic.

 

Good deal. I think we're supposed to have storms here in SC tonight, so I don't know if I'll be able to get in the garage or not... but I'll sure see what I can find out. It's possible that switch could be the culprit - there's some play in mine, plus I guess I need to do some lubing to some of the linkages. Sometimes it's still hard to get in and out of L range and back into R or H, but I haven't worked on that yet.

Glad the Lord gives us patience when we don't have it. Thanks so much as always for being such a huge help.

 

I probably won't be able to work on it until Saturday, but can I do this under the hood instead of taking all of the plastic off? If so, which wires would I connect together there?

 

The main wire you'd change is the gray wire from the gear selector. Just follow it up from the shift box(may have to remove the sheathing) to the terminal board,remove it from the terminal and stick it in the red/white wire group.This should allow the awd light to work if the grounds are ok.

 

I rode it a good while this afternoon, and I am going to try to get into it tomorrow if possible. I need that 4wd - it would have come in handy today in the woods! I was looking at the Partzilla diagram for the plastic:
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http://www.partzilla.com/parts/search/Polaris/ATV/2000/A00CH33AC+SPORTSMAN+335/FRONT+CAB/parts.html

How hard is it to get that panel off by itself?

The throttle is wanting to stick wide open at times, too. Is that a possible WD-40 or lithium grease fix? It's only when it's pretty much full on that it wants to stick.

 

Not necessary to remove the front cab,just the front panel under the rack to get to the electronics. On the throttle sticking,could be the cable itself in a bind as it wraps around the frame,carb slide sticking,etc. Plus wouldn't hurt to open the throttle housing and use a little wd40 or pb blaster with a spray tube in the throttle cable housing. Lube would work its way down.

 

I'm sorry I misunderstood - I thought I would need to get to the same spot he was into to unplug that terminal and plug back into. Should I just splice a wire or can I unplug something and replug like he is doing in the video?

Can you give me your PayPal address? You've helped me so much I'd like to give you at least a small gift for all of your help. You help so many people on here and have gone way beyond the call of duty to help me. I am a decent mechanic but often need help, and since I have never had one of these things I have been at a loss at times even with a shop manual. Too bad I have to work for a living - I probably wouldn't have to bother you so much.

And speaking of the shop manual, I feel a little weird buying the PDF knockoff since it's a copy. I'm afraid that's a copyright infringement - feel like I need to buy a paper print version.