Hey folks! New guy here, looking for opinions and advice. Here's the skinny:


I pseudo inherited a 99 Sportsman 500. It belonged to my wife's father, he passed away suddenly about 9 years ago (2008), it was his quad. I've only been with the wife about 4 years, so I have no history with the bike. The summer before he passed, it stopped running. He was, apparently, a great wrench, always fixing anything from cars to yard machines as a side job, and judging by the mammoth tool collection he had, I believe it. I was told that his diagnoses was that the issue with this bike was a "bad coil", but he hadn't gotten around to fixing it before he was gone.


So, it's been sitting in the garage ever since, and at this point it needs to get either fixed, sold, or scrapped. We'd like to have something to plow the driveway with in the winter, so I'm going to take a stab at getting this thing running. I'm good with small engine repair, but I'm no mechanic, the way I fix cars is by taking them to a garage and writing them a check, lol! So yeah, that's where we're at.


I figure step one is tearing this thing down a bit so I can get access to everything. That's where I kind of ran in to my first problem. I did manage to find a service manual online and started ripping off body parts. I pulled off the side panels and the front grill, then I got to the rack mount and found that the teardown skipped from step 4 (remove the first set of bolts) to step 7 (re-install everything in the reverse order of removal). Great. That's page 427 through 429 for anyone that has the same manual. This thing has a front bumper and a winch on it, so I think I may have to take that off first, and figure there's no harm in just removing every bolt I can find and seeing what happens until I get that off.


That aside, here's where I'm generally thinking of going with this:


Buy a new battery
Change the oil
Fill up the coolant
Re-connect the spark plug (looks brand new, and was left unscrewed, so I'm thinking her dad had at least tried that already)
Give it some fresh gas
Try to start it, confirm that 8 years of sitting has not magically fixed the issue
Come back to forum and ask for troubleshooting advice, lol


If anyone has any words of encouragement, I'd be happy to hear them. I'll keep the thread updated as I work through everything, hopefully within a few months I'll have this thing back up and running.


Thanks!


W

 

You'll almost certainly need to rebuild the carburetor and may need a new fuel pump or fuel lines to go with it. Sitting that long is really bad for them and it may have several problems. Check to make sure the air filter is okay and there's no mouse nest in there. Mice also like to build nests inside the clutch covers so if it does fire up and doesn't sound right give the clutches a look. The old ones also had soft cams that could wear down the exhaust lobe.

 

Don't even mess with cranking it until you rebuild the carb. Hopefully it's it's not too corroded after all these years.Polaris Sportsman 500 Carburetor Repair Kit Fits 1999-2000 Carb: Shindy 03-416 | eBay You can check the fuel pump by pulling the fuel line from the carb and cranking the engine over. If it's a weak flow,fuel pumps are cheap.Fuel Pump Fit For Sportsman 325 99-00/Sportsman 500 96-04/Xpedition 325 2000-02 | eBay If after the oil and filter change you are able to get it running,then go through the rest of the service list in the manual on hub fluid,gear case fluid and other service needed.

 

Ok, awesome, thank you both for the info! I might just go ahead and order the fuel pump. For $15 or less, it seems prudent. Should I put a new fuel filter on it too? Again, seems cheap:




For some reason the owner's manual says to have a dealer install that. But how hard could that be? It says it's inline, so I assume it isn't buried in the tank. I'll have to pull the service manual back up though.


From what was described to me about what happened to it / what it was doing, I think I'm going to find it isn't making spark, and that's going to be my biggest battle. I've read a bunch of threads on that though and was watching some Ebay vidoes last night on testing the electrical system and replacing the stator. It seems like that may be in my future, but I'll take it one step at a time.


Thanks again, and will keep updating as I work through this!


W

 

New fuel filters yes. If you're not getting spark it may be a simple as cleaning up the pick up coil under the recoil cover. If that doesn't help then pulling the black wire from the reverse limiter may help.Look in the electrical trouble shooting guide of the service manual. Owners manuals always say to have a dealer replace parts.. Just remember where the fuel pump lines go.

 

Ok, good deal. I'll get some parts on order today and hopefully have them by the weekend so I can keep this moving along.


Thank you very much!




W

 

Just a quick update, making some forward progress.


Did manage to get the whole front end torn apart. The theory of removing bolts and seeing what happens worked, got all the grill, winch, and bumper stuff off. Tonight, managed to finagle the front fender off and removed the right side foot well, so I think I have everything off that I need to in order to start the real work.


I have a carb rebuild kit, fuel pump, fuel filter, oil filter, and air filter on order. Everything but the fuel filter should be here by Friday, and it will show sometime next week.


Bought a new battery at the store yesterday, didn't realize that I was essentially buying a Lincoln log set and that I'd have to fill it with acid and then charge it up. What century are we in again? I need to go buy a trickle charger for that, and thinking that something from harbor freight should do the job.


Bought oil yesterday too, but I think I got the wrong thing. Bought full synthetic 10w-40 4-stroke motorcycle oil. But looks like I should have bought 0w-40 or 5w-40 based on some Googles today. I might try to return that when I take the old battery back to get the core charge refunded.


Nothing else of significance at this time, just slowly pushing it along in the evenings after work.




W

 

You don't have to take the oil back as it will work,BUT if you do I'd either get 0w40 or (gotta throw my two cents in also.. Rotella T6 5w40. Cheaper than most synthetics and a lot of people use it in cycles,atvs ,lawn equipment,etc including myself.

 

Gonna say that your 2 cents is worth more than the average pennies, lol, pretty confident your avatar should be Yoda! My end game is to use the quad to plow in the winter, so my understanding is a lower first number is probably better in my application. That's assuming I ever get it running and don't just end up with a garage that looks like a drunken grizzly bear smashed a Polaris. Time will tell!

 

Shouldn't come down to that.. If you get frustrated or too much alcohol is involved,get back on the forum and the ATV Connection shrinks here can talk you out of beating it up..