Yep, well,,,we lost an engine too. Autopsy revealed a severely seized piston and cylinder, including seized upper bearing, but no damage to the valve train....Maybe there is a blocked oil passage? Why would there be such selective damage? The oil vent tube was pinched on restart,,I was not there to hear the sssssst, but the tech has done this many many times without incident.

 

I changed the oil on mine at 20 h0urs and went by the owners manuel and there was no mention of oil pump priming it just said to replace the oil as soon as possible which I did and I took the line off of the oil tank ,when I restarted it after the oil change the warning light wasn"t on so the pump must not have lost it"s prime ,(if there is no oil pressure the warning light should come on for sure ),it now has 45 hours on it and is still running so I figure it must be fine,I think that the priming procedure is more of a precautionary measure in case the oil is not refilled right away or within a reasonable amount of time after draining it because there must be some sort of check ball in the pump to retain the oil and if it sits to long without oil will eventually leak past it and drain the pump.,but now that I know that it should be primed I will definately doing it the next oil change.

 

I guess the oil pressure warning light wouldn"t come on because apparently there isn"t one ,I was just looking through my owners manual and it doesn"t show my 04.5 500 as having one ,I can"t believe that they would have all that other stuff on the instrument panel and not put an oil pressure warning light on it ,never the less I would think if it lost it"s prime and you started it up after changing the oil the damage would be done right away not gradually.

 

If the pump loses its prime, with no oil flowing you won't be going far. I asked the " priming question" on another forum because the instructions in the kit from Polaris said "prime" and the owners manual didn't. Like someone here already pointed out, the service manual said Prime.......

 

I can tell you all from experiance that if you have the engine apart all the way to the crank that you had better prime the pump with the afore mentioned procedure in the other posts or you will sieze something.

On normal oil changes it is good insurance but I have found if you rev the engine a little it will pick up the prime and be OK. Do not just start up the engine and just let it idle, its not enough RPMs to pick up the prime sometimes. To be sure of a prime you can shut the engine down after about twenty seconds and check the oil. It shoud be lower because the oil filter has been filled. In my bad experiance it took about one to two minutes for the engine to sieze after a overhaul. On an oil change there is a lot more oil still left in the engine to keep it lubricated and assist the oil pump in getting a prime.

 

My service manual does not mention anything about priming the pump in the oil change procedure. It does mention cleaning the screen, but nothing about priming the pump.

 

Where is this "slit" at? The hose on mine that runs from the top of the tank to the pump is a hard line that is about 6" long in an "L" shape. Then there is a rubber hose attached to it that is about 3" long that runs to the pump. Do I pinch that rubber hose? I removed and cleaned my screen on my last oil change and have ran it about 10 hours since. It ran fine too. But like I said above, my service manual never mentioned priming the pump.

 

I don't know if the scrambler is the same as my Sportsman but the hose is at the top back side of the oil tank, very soft flexable hose that can be pinched with needle nose pilers. The hose you are talking about is the supply hose. Also in the 2004 Sportsman 400/500 service manual, sec. 2.25 of Maintenance, is Oil Pump Priming Procedure.....

 

I found it in my manual finally. It WAS NOT in the oil change procedure section, even though they did mention cleaning the screen. I had to look it up in the glossary to find it. It mentions it being a hose that goes to the air box?

 

Yes that is the hose, its a vent line thats why it goes to the air box....