A riding buddy was complaining about no AWD on his 98 sp500. We tested it (spinning on ice and had the bike up on jacks as well) and could not get the front wheels to engage. We verified the voltage to the coils, changed the fluid, checked the magnet positions, then removed the hubs cleaned and refilled with new fluid. We checked the armature plate operation and hilliard clutch assembly while apart and none showed wear. We were almost at our wits end when it was discovered the hilliard sleeve inside the hub would turn inside the hub. I read lots of posts but had never found reference to this sort of thing. We got some sleeve loctite and reinstalled the sleeves and are waiting for new seals before we'll know for sure but I think this will fix it

 

are you talking about the race inside the wheel hub itself? on both wheels? i saw one come loose, but not both. were you able to restake them after loctiting? just curious if he knows what caused it on his.

 

Yes the race inside the wheel hub, and yes on both wheels. We did not stake it as a polaris mechanic we discussed this with had seen it once before and had poor results staking it, eventually changing out the hub. We used permatex sleeve retainer. I think it is very similar to 260 loctite (green stuff). This stuff seemed to setup almost immediately after installing the sleeve back in the hub. We will soon find out. The owner of the machine is not the original owner and has no idea what may have caused this.

 

sorry, so many ?'s. would you let me know if the sleeve retainer stuff works? we tried the loctite and staking and couldn't get good results so we changed the hub $$. the one we had got damaged from someone turning the awd on while the back wheels were spinning pretty fast.

 

Yes I'll post the results when it is reaseembled friday.

 

The sleeve retainer stuff worked perfectly on this machine. The unit was reassembled and AWD is working perfectly. I've since heard of other '98 models that have had this problem. I wonder if it could be a batch of poor fitting sleeves.