One of our 1994 Polaris 400L's has an interesting issue with the rear axle.

The axle has lateral play in the carrier housing! The sprocket hub can/has rub on the swing arm. There's at least 1/8 inch of play.

I have disassembled the axle and no pieces are missing or broken. The bearings appear to be in good shape. (And by their design, they shouldn't provide any centering effect, anyway.) The snap ring is intact, nothing is missing. Color me confused!

What can I do to resolve this?

 

The housing itself can wear where the bearings seat and allow movement. I've had some housings where the bearings would fall out from being loose.I'd check this area out and replace the housing if worn.

 

I don't know exactly what I did, but it is now working as it should. I completely disassembled the axle again and double-checked the bearings and the carrier housing; there is no play in either of them.

I believe I had left off one of the washers between the lock nuts and the sprocket the last time I attempted to assemble it. I am not sure, but that's all I can think of - nothing was changed.

(This issue came up because of a freak accident. Something bent the edge of the hitch bracket and caused it to rub through the heads of the bolts on the sprocket hub. This lead to a catastrophic failure of the sprocket hub while riding. I was replacing the hub and sprocket when I noticed the issue, and thought it could have contributed. Now that it's all together and working like it should, I think I simply messed up on putting it back together and misdiagnosed the issue.)

 

Way I look at things is that if the washer wasn't needed they wouldn't have a big picture of it on the parts break down.But I have been known to throw over the shoulder bolts on to my tear down table when I couldn't figure out where the devil they went only to find out later and have to dig around for em.. Glad it was nothing major.