We were riding on a trail and heard a metallic knocking noise. The upper frame snapped completely in half in the heat affected zone of the front two upper welds. The bike is an 05 Ozark with about 2200 miles of typical Colorado trail riding on it. A quick search found that other people on this forum as well as other forums has also had this problem.
http://forums.atvsource.com/vi...&highlight=ozark+frame
Suzuki is NOT supporting this problem at all with me or other people this has happened to. This is obviously defective welds or a design problem. If you own an Ozark, you might want to take a close look at the welds. The cracks are clean breaks where the tube meets the weld.

 

From what I gather, you have to pull the plastic and the tank off to get a look at the area of the frame that's failing?

 

Pull off the left and right panels, follow the top frame tubes towards under the handle bars and you can see the welds. One on the left side and one on the right side of the frame. If it's not completely seperated, look for a fine hairline crack in the paint where the tube meets the weld. My guess is that they are fatigue cracks and they start from the bottom side of the tube and work their way up because that is the direction of the stresses..