Hey Polaris owners I'm about to buy a new sp700 and i've been reading alot of information in a bunch of forums, i've been hearing from some guys that the rods go in the twins lack of oil to one of them, and to make matters worse Polaris will not pick up the bill!!!!!!
Have you guys heard about this happening? is it a common problem with the twins? should I hold off on buying that 700 or are they still a good machine.

Thanks for the replies!!!!!

 

That's the first I've heard of that problem. My 600 is still new only got 30 hours on it. But another friend of mine has an '03 sp700, and he hasn't had any problems. I did alot of research and rode bikes from pretty well all other brands. I liked Polaris the best. The bottom line is whatever bike you like the best, go for it. In this day and age they are all decent machines. Good Luck!

 

i dont own a sp but to be honest i havent heard of this prob but i have heard alot about coolant probs
dont get me wrong i love polaris but if your second guessing yourself maybe you should weight

spending a load of money on a quad and hateing it is a terrable feeling

I am sure any machine you look into enough is going to have probs with somthing..

 

I would hardly call a few people (maybe a 1/2 dozen) any thing to worry about. One guy wants to sue Polaris because he blew the engine on his 2 year old quad. Did you see his mods?

There are just to many unknowns for anyone on these forums to say their is a problem. Wrong oil, mods like above or just plain stupidity or maybe their actually are few isolated problems which should be covered under warranty. This holds true for any brand you may by. I say you got a better chance of winning the lottery than getting a bad engine. As all of you know, as soon as somebody has a problem, we all see it posted on all the forums. If everyone posted just because they have no problems we would need a 100 more forums to cover all the posts. Put it into perspective and take it with a grain of salt.

 

I have been keeping up with the rod bearing failure topics on some of the other sites. If what some of these guys say is true, every single 600 and 700 built to date should have rod bearing failures on the left side and also cam and countershaft bearing failures. The 600 and 700 have the same bearings and crankcase, the crankshaft is only different because of the different stroke. In reality only a small percentage of failures have actually been reported, and who knows what the real cause was. I find it hard to believe this so called design problem exists in every 600 and 700, there are too many of them with thousands of miles and no problems. I have an 03 model with nearly 1000 miles and no problems, and in my opinion the best ATV I have owned so far. I would not hesitate to buy a SP600 or SP700 or hopefully a SP800 at some point. I like mine well enough, if the rod bearing should fail at some point, I will just have to fix it and keep riding.

 

3 SP 700s (one '02 and 2 '04s) and 3 SP 600s (all '03s) in our riding circle. Not one internal engine problem. They have all been excellent quads. The only problem I have had was on the '02 700 (1000 miles and about 120 hours) and it was the leaking water pump cover. That problem was easily fixed (for free) by the updated cover. I think any of the internal engine problems that people report are VERY few and far inbetween. And as others have mentioned, were these 'legit' problems or was it because some beat the crap out of the quad? I don't have the answer, but my gut feeling is you have next to no chance of seeing a rod/crank failure on the twins if you buy it new. If you buy it used, then just be darn sure of who you are buying from (as you would with anything you buy used).

 

I just bought a 600 sportsman after doing a lot of research. These machines take a lot of abuse. All of them are going to have some problems. I have not heard of the rod problem but do know of the leaky coolant problem. I actually already had mine leak and have already had it replaced. Mine is only 2 weeks old and was leaking after 5 days. This scared the crap out of me but the dealer fixed it free of charge of course. He also got the quad back to me in 1 day in time for the snow. Anyway, the sportsman series are great quads and wouldnt think twice about buying another one.

 

Check out the ATVQUADSQUAD and HIGHLIFTER forums for info on the rod bearing failures, and you will see some interesting posts. I'm sure these failures were real, but I don't necessarily agree with the theories on the what caused them.