The bad part about being mechanically inclined is that everyone comes to you with problems they want you to fix. My buddy bought a 1997 Sportsman 500 this summer that was in good shape and had low miles. When he bought it, the guy selling it said that the reverse over ride was disconnected. When he brought the bike over to my place, it looked very clean for a 1997 and everything seemed to work. My buddy bought a plow and a winch for it and planned on using it for plowing snow at his house in the winter. We got our first big snow last week and now my buddy is frantic because his Sportsman is always getting stuck. I went over to check it out and I noticed the AWD light does come on when the button is pushed and it does go out when it is put in reverse. I can push the over ride button and the light comes back on. The front tires do not spin in forward or reverse. Is it possible that the guy went to unplug the over ride and pulled the wrong wire instead? I havent got to dig into it yet because I have to remove a front rack basket off of the bike to get to the wiring. Im gonna tackle it this weekend with a service manual but I was hoping maybe it is something simple like an unplugged wire.

Thanks,
Mike

 

If it's not a wiring problem that the owner did,you can try this that a lot of people have done to fix erratic awd function.

 

Thanks OPT. I know my buddy made some comment that the original owner told him that he disconnected a brown wire which was supposed to disable the reverse over ride. Is it possible all he did was disconnect a ground that now disabled the AWD? His sportsman has the older round red button for the AWD but I assume it would be similar to the one in the video.

Thanks,
Mike

 

Brown is a ground wire. Black wire is the one to be disconnected on the reverse limiter module to defeat it.

 

i have a 98 so the wiring harness is different and there isn't a video of one the same as mine, will the videos of the newer atv's work the same?

 

Hi all! My 2006 Polaris sportsman 500 eli has an electrical issue. I didn't see any exact talks about its issue so I am asking here. When I turn key on everything works but the speedometer is very erratic on the LCD display it flashes contanly saying low fuel or Check engine but the speedometer is accurate . Does anyone have an idea possibly?

 

if it's just a "low fuel and check engine" message, I would guess your float inside the tank is saturated and wont "float" anymore. Some machines you can actually see the float using a flashlight and looking through the fill hole. Easier on the white plastic tanks. Open the fuel tank, try not to shake the machine(ripples or waves in the fuel make it harder to see) and look inside. If the tank has fuel and the float is at the bottom, the float is saturated. The sending unit could be bad as well. I've never seen this, but in all reality, the float arm could come out of the sending unit, but I've never seen it before.

 

I'll have to check it out and see if that's the issue .. I did some research and found out previous owner had changed the fuel tank couple years ago and said it started doing that since then . And also the bike is running inconstant here lately. If I run it easy and just drive it .it runs great but if I get to pull hard on something or use it harder for work like I usually do it starts dying and idling way up stuck like
. Will back fire occasionally. And will get hot very fast.

 

You say it gets "Hot" real quick. Do you mean the motor is actually hot? Like blowing coolant into the overflow? or you drive it for a period of time that the motor literally couldnt be "Hot" that quick?
04 to 08 machines had a PDM, or ecm, or control module, issue that could cause exactly that. The part has several names. The motor isnt overheating, but since the PDM is malfunctioning, it thinks it's hot and the "Hot light" will come on, on the cluster.
example - I pulled a brand new Polaris 500 off the shipping crate, set it up, installed the battery, turn the key on and the hot light came. The motor hadnt even been started.