Just before I put my Sportsman 500 EFI away last season I had a flashing battery light when accelerating, figured it was battery time this Spring, but not the case. New battery old battery, same. I put in diag mode and looked at voltage, normal 12.2 at idle, accelerate jumps tover 16 volts - an over charge condition. Checked all connections, cleaned, tightened, etc - same problem. Its weird, all of a sudden the voltage goes crazy, come back to idle after a minute back at 12.2 volts, no battery light.

Checked AC voltage at stator, all fine, ohm'd out stator all good. Looks like voltage regulator, looking for some opinions, can grab a used for 50.00, but who knows if its good, no return.

Another question I have is the seperate yellow/red wire on voltage reg, what that does, and what is supposed to read, I thought it was supposed to read 12v coming back from battery, but can't remember, reads 0 in/out of volatge regulator.

Can't believe I'm going through this again with another Polaris with a 1000 miles on it, went Yamaha on sleds because of the quality of new Polaris sleds, thinking of switching ATVs now.

But, just got news on my Chevy Avalance that lost its torque converter, and I've been a Chevy guy all my life, so what is bulit good these days?

Bad day of toys breaking I guess.

 

If you said regulator was charging over 16 volts, possibly could be causing battery to over charge will dry up cells and eat up batteries. I've had it happen.replaced a couple for shorting out and overcharging! Most of the time they quit charging,BUT can overcharge. Don't know if this is the problem,but sounds like could be?? OPT

 

Yep, found the battery a "little" dry, put a new one in and it was freshly charged, it baked that one, now my clutch cover has nice white drip marks all over it from the over flow, nothing a little trim paint or mud can't fix!

I ordered the reg, will update post with the fix - hopefully. My worst thought is the darn mice chewed a wire some where in the harness where I can't get to without ripping everything out.

I hate those mice, once a year they get me on some toy.

 

I hated em too! I had to pull dead field mice out along with their nest and repair the chewed up wires! Somehow they just LOVE insulation around the wires and seems like they always chewed wires down to where I barely had enough to splice! Put D-CON(sic) or some kind of rat/mice bait in and around atv,see if it helps! They seemed to me they always headed toward the pod area and under the front panel and did their damage! OPT