approx 400 miles ago had the topend redone, think Ran perfect after that on 4 trips up north, last weekend on the machines 5th trip up, it began to become hard to start, on a gas stop it took me 15 mins to get it to go, we were 45 miles from camp, it made it 20 miles before it decided to start bogging and it had to be towed back.

so after alot of thinking, i left a full tank in it about a year with seafoam in it, so now its to the point it wont even fire so I took the carb of and cleaned it good (wasnt dirty at all), got great spark, just checked compression and i got approx 90 p.s.i (not happy) cost me $700 to do the rebuild.

Heres what I found...5 trips up I keep getting water and sand in Airbox, I use Uni filters and oil the crap out of them with good filter oil, they get cleaned and reoiled every trip. the machine isnt run in deep water, 6" deep puddles max, water comes up over the tank and goes right in that high vent on the airbox....how the heck are guys keeping water out? I have realized my scrambler has a plastic bumper/skid plate on the front while the TB doesnt? (i think that would help since my Scrambler doesnt have this issue and i go in way deeper water. got to be a way to keep water from going in there besides staying out of puddles? when i pulled the filter I had some water get past the filter for sure. Actually had abot 3" of water in the airbox along with mud..so thats got to get fixed.

I really would love to get rid of it but my wife doesnt ride much loves the little thing, so going to do the topend again, crank seals and call Ritter cycle and talk pipes and clutching...and ditch the oil pump and premix.

I have seen alot of these things in puddles and full of mud so they cant all be pulling in water..if anyones got some ideas...on how to keep it dry in there besides not getting the machine wet..lets hear them.

 

when i had my TB, i opened up the drain holes on the airbox with a drill bit. i never had an issue with water/sand. heck, that's what the TB lived in. the only extra thing i did was to stuff some not so thick foam in the mouth of the intake tube there behind the fuel tank and layered the bottom of the airbox with the foam too. i didn't upgrade to the oiled filters you're using. i used the old factory style air filter.

 

My old 400 SP which is just a yard machine now has a similar airbox, which has a foam filter that slides over that upper vent, I looked at a parts diagram for the TB and there wasnt one on there? guess i will have to figure something full proof....she likes to get dirty.

 

there was only 2 things i didn't like about my TB. it was a 2 stroke and it was chain driven. had it been a 4 stroke with a shaft,,,,WOW, i would've kept it to this day. it had the best ride of any quad i've ever had.

 

I love 2 strokes and i dont mind the chain really, you would really hate all the chains on a 96 sportsman 400.