Identify Bad Clutch Belts on a Polaris ATV

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village my name is Tom Roland and we are at Cottonwood Motor Sports and I am here to tell you about doing a service on a Polaris Quad and this is fairly representative of macho, many of them. The other problem that we run into is on the belts. The belts don't like heat and it is amazing what they will put up with but then if the unit is not running, then the belt is not turning. If the belt's not turning, then the belt is sitting stationary and the front clutch is digging in one spot and when it is digging in one spot, it is making a lot of heat. Since people don't understand necessarily how it works, they don't pay attention to it. What happens is you'll get what you call an hour glass. The belt will wear in one spot and it will get thin and that will make it start to be grabby, shaky and kind of go thump thump and next step is it will get hot and start to eliminate and pieces will start to come out of the belt. The next step after that is they turn into this and that leaves you stranded. The belts are amazing. They put up with an incredible amount of abuse and basically if you can smell burned rubber, you haven't done the belt any good. That is one of the things to look for on a Polaris. That is one of the reasons also the belts need to be looked at every 100 hours. Like I said they are amazingly resilient, they hold up really well. As long as you follow some certain basic rules, the system just works awesome. "