First off let me introduce myself. My name is Stephen and I seem to have a habit of buying older Suzuki quads. I own a 85 Suzuki 230 Quadrunner (no longer running), a 90 250 LTF 2wd, and I am fixing to purchase a 95 250 4wd to fix up. I have pictures of the 90 250 on my profile here and a video on youtube.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KmI-350YG8

Second let me tell everybody that I am impressed with all the users who own and work on older Suzuki quads. This is the main reason I am joining these forums.

So this coming Saturday I am purchasing the 95 Suzuki 250 4wd and I am told that the front wheels do not engage in 4wd. It has about 2000ish miles and has been sitting in a barn for the past year or so. I am told it ran rough about 6 months ago so I am confident fresh gas, new spark plug, a clean carburetor, and fresh oil will solve most of my running problems. So does anybody have any suggestions about what to look for on the front 4wd? Is it a safe guess that it is probably just a loose nut or something in the linkage that engages it? Or am i going to have to get another differential from eBay?

Thanks in advance for the help
Stephen

 

I second this question!! I have a similar problem. Mine engages, but only in forward drive, not reverse. All I get is clicking from the front when trying to reverse in 4x4? This causes a real problem for me cause I like to ride this really narrow creek right behind my house and turning around has become impossible without the reverse 4x4. Any help would be great.

But to help with ruling out what isn't the problem with your situation, maybe try pulling back the cv boot and see what is going on with your axles. Put it up on jacks and try to engage the 4x4. With our older machines, striping an axle is not hard to do, specially if you ride it hard (or in your case, ridden hard by the previous owners). Also, is there any resistence when you switch your gears from 2wd to 4wd? If it feels to easy, then you might want to check those cable linkages to the gear box (front diff), something might have broken, came loose or striped. Good luck, zuks are worth keeping up cause they will last as long as you care for them!! I thought mine was old, but seems like there are lots of like '86 250 owners around here, still going strong.

 

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: OLDSCHOOLQUAD

I second this question!! I have a similar problem. Mine engages, but only in forward drive, not reverse. All I get is clicking from the front when trying to reverse in 4x4? This causes a real problem for me cause I like to ride this really narrow creek right behind my house and turning around has become impossible without the reverse 4x4. Any help would be great.



But to help with ruling out what isn't the problem with your situation, maybe try pulling back the cv boot and see what is going on with your axles. Put it up on jacks and try to engage the 4x4. With our older machines, striping an axle is not hard to do, specially if you ride it hard (or in your case, ridden hard by the previous owners). Also, is there any resistence when you switch your gears from 2wd to 4wd? If it feels to easy, then you might want to check those cable linkages to the gear box (front diff), something might have broken, came loose or striped. Good luck, zuks are worth keeping up cause they will last as long as you care for them!! I thought mine was old, but seems like there are lots of like '86 250 owners around here, still going strong.</end quote></div>

thanks for the ideas. i am hopping it is just a cable problem. if not i will figure it out. If stripping axles is as easy as you say i probably better start looking for something heavy duty anyway. i plan on putting 23" AT mud lites on the front and 25" 589s out back. I am hopping I don't have to eBay a differential, but I will if i have to. I've seen some front axles on there too. I'll let you know what fixes the problem.