I can lock my rear wheel ,but you have to almost stand on the pedal to do it. Do not see many places where you would want rear braking only. The one hand 60/40 works best for me.

 

evidently from what i gather, the owner's manual consider's the rear pedal brake as an EMERGENCY brake so all togather with the front lever its alittle better than without,,,,,,,,

 

on my 2000 sportsman. i cold step on the brake. not to hard to lock them up and do slides on the shop cement floor or on gravel. now on my 2008 i have a hell of a time trying to get the rear breaks to lock up with the foot brake. evon standing on it its still a pain to get it close to locking up. but then again the brake rotor on my 2000 is about where the gear indacator switch is and was small. and the new sportsmans have the disc in the wheel on the right side and there fair size. i dont know why it stops like crap tho. but oh well. not to worryed about it.

 

oh and the hand brake works good tho.

 

thought i would chime in just to say my 06 SP rear brakes are fine when engaged by the hand lever, but the foot pedal doesn't do jack, and i mean nothing.
i tried to fix it but gave up after checking fluid ok and pad ok. it is a bad design. just hope the front lever never brakes.

EK in CT

 

I've got a 2007 Sportsman 800 and it's the same deal, rear brake lever hardly does anything.

 

My 08 does work good. they changed the position of the resvoir ALOT higher and it does make a difference. Get some new hose and mount the resvoir higher works wonders? Done this to quite a few buddys bikes and it works, Also make sure no air in line alot of my riding buddies did have air in their lines and NO complaints after bleeding the rear brake.... Polaris did have a problem with the earlier models getting air in the rear brakes alot of us had to put a weight on the rear brake pedal overnite and problem solved. I really think it was because of the resvoir NOT being high enuf over the caliper.....

 

you may or may not want to do this, but i cut the plastic off around the pedal so i can get on it more. just a little more mud and water.
great info on the resivour position. im def gonna change that now.