The left front wheel on my 99 polaris sportsman 500 will not engage in AWD. I've replaced the roll cage, and waiting arrival of the Armature plate. I think that perhaps the electro-magnet in the strut is not energizing. Is there a voltmeter test to see if the magnet is energizing? Here's some words of wisdom from a retired Naval Aviator: "You can't catch an arresting cable if you tail hook's not down."

 

You can check the coil in a couple different ways. You can take the hub off,have it in gear,awd switched on. Hold the plate close to the seal sleeve then have someone turn the key on. Plate should pull and hold against seal sleeve and should be hard to move until the key is turned off. If it doesn't,the coil could be weak or have a shorted wire or ground may be faulty. First check that the wiring is ok down to the coil,has 12 volts at the connector under the front panel. Gray is the hot wire,brown is ground. Resistance should be between 25-30 ohms on the coil.Plus the seal sleeve should be flush(or no more than .001 clearance) with the inner pole of the strut(the exposed casting that the coil sits around)If the sleeve face is worn/damaged,I'd replace it,plus the coil. Most times the coil face will crack when you knock off the sleeve. Slight wear rings around the seal sleeve is normal. Torque on the hub nut must not be more than 12 foot pounds also. You might want to look at this also. http://forums.atvconnection.com/pola...-hub-coil.html

 

Beautiful, Old Polaris Tech ! I turned on the ignition switch(did not start the engine), put the gear selector forward, turned on the all wheel drive switch and the Armature Plate firmly attached to the magnetic coil. It works as advertised ! So, the problem is worn roll cage extender tabs on the Armature Plate so that when the magnetic coil energizes, the tabs are too short to engage the roll cage. Incidentally, the Polaris Maintenance manual does NOT discuss how to replace the Magnetic Coil in the strut. So, for those ATV owners who have a dead magnetic coil, it's a trip to your polaris maintenance shop. The coil costs $110 and the labor cost will water your eyes.

 

Not that hard to replace the coil and coil sleeve.Just takes patience and a little time to take the old ones off,clean the strut up,new rtv sealant and the new coil and sleeve.Many service manuals no mater what brand don't get into detail on all repairs.Many assume you to know basically what to do,but do give you critical instructions such as the coil sleeve to inner pole clearance specs and how to check which the service manual does in chapter 10. Glad it's just worn out plate tabs and not the coil itself.When this happens it's usually because of improper hub nut torque. If not torqued down correctly the tabs will wear down/round off by not fully locking into the roll cage to begin with. When you get it assembled back,torque the hub nut to 15 foot pounds to preload the bearings,back off 1/2 turn,retorque to 12 foot pounds while you slowly spin the hub. If you have to back the nut off a tad from there to align the cotter pin,that's ok. Hub nut torque specs are 124-144 inch pounds(10 to 12 foot pounds). I just had the final torque of 12 foot pounds and usually had to back off a tad to align the cotter pin.This still kept it within torque specs. Forgot to mention,but always hold the cv joint at the back of the strut while you install the hub back on the shaft. As the manual says,the slightest movement inward on the shaft can cause the armature plate tabs to not align properly with the roll cage and cause damage when torqued down. I found quite a few like that over the years that happened to some that serviced their own hubs.