Just withing the past fwe month my sportsman donts want to stay running. Last winter it was fine so its not just the cold that is doing it. It just dosnt like to stay idleing at about 1200 rpms. It likes to drop. I have done everything and the dealer has too to keep it runing but nothing seems to work. It will run for about two min then it starts to drop. It is runing too rich, like the choke is still one a little bit. The dealer is afraide to put a diffrent main jet in it ro adjust anything like the fuel mixture screw or anything. Any help would be welcome.

 

what model, what year?

 

Also the dealer said that my sportsman has about a hundred hours and three hundread miles and some times when they have that low of a speed average that the seat that the needle goes in there is a gasket that can wear out leting more fuel in. Has anyone heard of that? Thanks for the replys.

 

Its a sportsman 700 carb. 2004

 

I have 127 hours and 500 miles and mine runs fine, but I do have a small leak from the overflow tube, however, I changed the needle and seat already so I don't think your dealer's theory holds water. the main jet is not going to affect your idle, the pilot jet controls the idle circuit. has anyone played with the fuel screw or is the plug still blocking it? if the screw is open try running it at 2.5 turns out from the seat. take the carb bowl off and clean out all the jets with carb cleaner and compressed air. if it ran fine last year then maybe there is something stuck in there.

 

The sportsman model with its carb mounted almost directly above the engine receives a lot of heat and as you already know it’s hot on the right side and at the carb because of the exhaust configuration.

This heat makes carb adjustments tricky until your machine really is heat soaked. That is why Polaris waved the white flag and put an idle adjustment **** next to the carb.

If everything runs fine and it’s just an idle problem in cold weather I’m afraid you will have to adjust it accordingly and live with it or buy a fuel injected machine..

My 2 cents

 

carb update, take a look

carb update page 2