A buddy of mine has an 02 sportsman 500 ho and the 4x4 has been acting up for instance it was working fine and then wouldn't work at all and then it wouldn't disengage and now it won't engage. We took the hubs completely apart last night and replaced the worn armature plates and cleaned and deburred the clutch cage so the hilliard clutch would work smoothly. We check the coils by turning the switch on, turning the AWD on and putting the bike in forward. The armature plates will stick to the coils. You have to pull them off but not tug on them or they don't fall off either. We did the 10 or 2 for the filling of the hub's like the parts guy at the local polaris dealership stated. We used the Polaris on demand fluid. We tightened the bolt on the drive shaft to 13 ftlbs then rotated it a few times and then backed off of it and retorqued it to 11 which should be 132 inlbs. With the fourwheeler off the ground you can engage the awd and the tires will start to spin but you can put your foot on the tire and it will stop. We even did the speedo bypass last week since the speedo is dead to make the 4x4 work and it was working until a few days ago. I have been searching on here for two weeks about the original intermittent 4x4 issue and have ran across a lot of good info but noting like what's happening here. Anyone have an idea on what would cause this. Thanks for all the help.

Also wanted to add that the AWD switch does light up.

And today my buddy took the sportsman out and the 4x4 started to work and then stopped again. He measured the ohm resistance on each hub and got 24.5 on each. He also tested the voltage from the awd switch to the connectors and they read 12v +. Also drained the fluid to the 4 or 8 area. So all of that is good. Could the hilliard clutches or the hubs themselves be causing this intermitted 4x4 issue?

Trying to combine two post together. Thanks for any info that you guys give.

 

ok i got a 94 400L 4x4... older but hub **** is all the same and let me tell... i had some major BS when it came to findin out how or why my 4x4 would not work..I know that you changed the armacher plates..but also on my i had to replace the garter springs.. and keyways...

 

would the garter springs cause the 4x4 not to engage? They guy that owned the bike before didn't take care of it and let the hubs run dry for quite sometime. When we opened them up there was no fluid at all. But when we disassembled them and everything except for the armature plate looked ok. We did have to do some light filing on the cage on the right side hud to allow the rollers to move freely like the left side did.

 

yea my guess would be to change them...and change the fluid.. run it for a bit,. and keep changin it like that to get all the crud out... but i would change them garter springs and keyways... not a promise... but you would def be surprised on what them little parts do

 

Do you think that the inside of the hub would be giving us any problems? Could it be damaged to the point that it wouldn't let the 4x4 engage?

 

its hard to say.. i dicked around with mine..had the hubs all tore apart cleaned them up good.. and nothing worked.. i ended up bringing mine into a shop.. but if i were you the garter springs and the key ways are pretty cheap..6.00 for the keyways and 25 and some change for the gartersprings.. it wouldnt hurt to try that first

 

Ok I'll talk to him and see if we can get our hands on those parts. I'll get back after we tinker some more. Thanks

 

When you had it apart and the armature plates were sticking to the magnets, it should have been pretty hard to pull the plates away, if it was easy I would say its the magnets or a voltage issue

 

well it wasn't exactly hard to remove the plates but they didn't fall off either. you have to pull some. I didn't have to break out the plyers or a screw driver to remove them. Just how strong of a pull should it be?

 

Ok an update. We now have 3wd at least. The right side front works perfect. We think that we either have a hilliard or hub problem. Maybe even both. We also switched the hilliards around and then the left wheel would work every now and then I think that the hilliard and the hub on the left side has been damaged from the guy before not running fluid in the hubs. Probably going to try some more swaping this weekend to see what works.