Hey all,

I was poking around the main ATVCONNECTION page
reading subjects of interest when I stumbled upon this
tech tip. (See reference below)

QUESTION:

Are our new (06' years and up) Sportsman models at
risk?

Thanks,

RTICKWAD

---------------------------------

ARTICLE:

" Another area to give extra attention to is the front hubs. Water (and mud) easily enters through the plastic hub cap and washes away the grease causing accelerated wear because the factory still insists on using unsealed ball bearings.

It is only a matter of a few months of underwater activities before pulled bearings look like this.

The fix is to remove the hub, pry out the inner seal, pound out the bearings, clean the interior and the center spacer and replace the bearings with the generic double rubber sealed variety referred to as -2RS from a bearing supply house. From top to bottom, left to right, center spacer coated with rust, factory unsealed bearing, factory inner seal (that actually works!) and the double-rubber sealed type of bearing recommended for replacement. "


REFERENCE:

https://atvconnection.com/D...ris-ATVs-Revisited.cfm

 

I think thats bull, I'm still on my orig set of front wheel bearings, i have replaced the rears and they are sealed.
Waters not getting in that cap and if it did wouldnt do much damage. Mine still looks new under those caps...

Jim

 

Yea its surprising cuz I never heard of this either, off course it DOESN'T SAY what models?

I don't know, thanks for your input Jimmy...x.x.!

 

for whats its worth i'll throw my .02 in. water is the worst thing for bearings hand down as sealed or not it will get in sometimes. these werent made as boats but some people use them as such by the looks at some videos ive seen. that being said, what i have found (or least think) is whats worse of bearing is oversized tires as i have have had a couple go on my 06'800 i had. this is one reason i liked the older bikes w/ all the grease fittings because after a bout in the mud/water you could go back and regrease them and push the water out. imo.

 

Well I have over 1800 miles on my 2006 Sp 450 with lots of water crossings on EVERY trail .........Did not even look at them yet!!.........I will do a full inspection after this season of riding and let you guys know ..............By then I will have over 2000 miles .......Thanks........Caper......

I did replace front bearings on a 2003-2004 A/C 2WD 250cc for a friend and they were not sealed .....................We did put sealed ones in though!!.........

 

Yep, water is bad when it comes to bearings. I can never find my way back to the dock when I'm out on large lakes... [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif[/img]

 

Water is bad on Bearings. You never know until you tear it down that you had a seal leak and it frankly can get in anywhere. Anytime you submerge a hub you should try to at least inspect for leaks the deeper the submersion the more likely a leak. Water develops a lot of pressure.

On the subject of Oversized tires they are not necessarily bad on bearings. Wider tires can produce additional Side to Side shock load like when you hit a rock on the sidewall. A wider tire places the moment of impact farther from the center, hence produces a larger stress due to the additional leverage with the distance from the centerline

The biggest thing about larger tires however is usually you put a deeper offset rim or even a spacer in there to move the tire further out so it will fit. This creates leverage against the centerline of the Bearing strucutre and will load the bearings more, sometimes to the point of exceeding the load limt of the bearing structure. Most wheel bearing failures are on the outer bearing. All of those wide tires we ran on Deep Dish rims looked really cool on our High School cars but they took a toll on the car/truck. The wheel manufacturers responded and they produced "CenterLine" wheels or essentially a zero offset wheel. This balances the loading on the bearings. If you run offset rims or spacers to gain clearance it is a good idea to keep a check on those bearings.

Although these aren't usually stressed at high speed like a car or a truck the mechanics around bearing structure and the forces are essentially the same and in fact trail banging is probably harder on them when it comes to sideloads of off axis forces....

 

Hmmm...I agree that the wider tires and offset rims of the muscle car era were tuff on bearings, axles, and suspensions in general.
But todays ATV rims are ALL negitive offset and are actually set inside of the true center line of the rim...
I'm wondering if the added weight of big tires don't do more damage then the width or offset

 

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: MooseHenden

Yep, water is bad when it comes to bearings. I can never find my way back to the dock when I'm out on large lakes... [img][/img]</end quote></div>

GROANNNNN!!! Am I the only one that got it?

 

Did I miss something..........Caper...........