I have a 2001 polaris sportsman 500 HO. Was trying to plow some snow last night and I noticed that the AWD is not working right. The AWD will work but the back tires have to be spinning pretty good before it kicks in, by the time it kicks in, its too late and I am already stuck or i have already let off the throttle because it is tearing the heck out of the lawn. I asked the polaris shop in my local area if they had any ideas, their idea was to bring it in to them and let them look at it......i would have no problem with that except last year they soaked me pretty bad. They had my bike for 6 weeks and said they were checking all kinds of things and swaping out parts on the bike and ran up a huge bill only to find that all the bolts, screws and everything else was still covered in mud when i finally got to pick the bike up......long story short, i got a $300 oil change after they took the "parts" they put on back off the bike......anyone have any ideas?

 

Does one tire kick in before the other tire? Does one tire never kick in? do both not work? If neither work at the same time and since the 01's had the individual hubs i would call this an electrical problem... maybe in the switch.

 

most likely if there is power going down to the hubs(awd light will be on)you may need to change the hub fluid(w/ polaris hub oil, no other) and clean them out as well. imo

 

I already dumped the fluid out of the hubs and filled with the polaris fluid, while i was there i also drained and replaced the fluid for the front end (pumpkin) with the proper polaris oil. When the AWD does kick it, both front tires kick in just fine but like i said in the first post, you have to be getting onto it pretty good to get it to kick in and as soon as you let off the throttle, it kicks back out. If the front tires didnt kick in at all i would agree that it could be an electrical problem, but with it working part time like this, i would have to shy away from that. I am an auto mechanic (or used to be) and can figure things out pretty good on a car or truck, but when it comes to these darn ATV's i can do basics. Looking at the parts diagram i see that there is some type of a clutch inside the hubs, is this a possiblility ? I was really hoping to hear someone had similar problems, those clutches are $178 each and that is more than I want to spend to just see if that is what it is........

 

Roller cage? Check out my thread a little while ago it may provide some insights
as to some common AWD problems/issues and how to deal with them.

Ref:

http://forums.atvconnection.com/pola...iscussion.html

R'

 

yes but with your year there are 2 separate mechanical hubs... its very unlikely that both hubs would experience problems at the same time.. which is why i asked if they kicked in at the same time. to me this sounds electrical.. otherwise a mechanical problem one wheel would engage at a different time then the other because the hilliard clutchs are independent of each other...

i wonder if the speedos were used in those years to control the awd like the newer machines... im not familiar with that but maybe a possibility.. If you want to rule out electrical just jump the hub coils to 12volts and see what happens. its easy enough and will rule out one possible problem.