Polaris ATV Tie Rod Maintenance Check

Video Transcript

"My name is Tom Roland and we are at Cottonwood Motor Sports and I am here to tell you about doing service on a Polaris Quad and this is a fairly representative of macho, many of them. Also things that need be looked at are the upper called the tie rod ends. The tie rod ends get a lot of abuse. You have to check back and forth to make sure there is any play in them and you have to inspect the nuts, look for bent tire rods and also the other end of them up here on the steering shaft. These steering shafts take a lot of abuse and these tie rod ends wear out and sometimes these bolts or anything can come loose. Another thing to look at also is your struts. Your struts are basically gas pre-charged shocks and they can leak oil. They can have oil in them and you need to make sure there is no oil residue around here and you also need to when the unit is on the ground, bounce it up and down on the corner lot you might do a car to make sure that the shocks are working freely and they are doing their jobs. Sometimes these can get bent. The upper bushings up here need to be looked at to make sure they are all right. If there is no damage, they are usually fine. Whenever you are doing these things, you've got to look at everything. As mechanics are used to working on them, we see stuff without even thinking about it, without even worrying about it. Also another point to maybe look at is on this unit here is the main chassis ground and main chassis ground is really important on an electrical system. If it is not making good contact, it can also cause electrical problems that are really hard to find some times. So you want to shake them to make sure they are nice and tight and they look like they are clean. You also want to check to make sure that the brake lines and stuff aren't abraded and chaffed and that there hasn't been any damage to them too because you don't want to lose brake fluid. Another thing to check too is up in here your cooling fan. You want to take your finger and spin the cooling fan and make sure that it rotates freely and that sticks and rocks or debris hasn't got up here and stuck it. A lot of times people will come in and their complaint is that the unit is over heating and it is over heating because the fan is not working and the fan is not working because the debris is plugged up between it and the radiator and it doesn't rotate anymore. So those are all simple things that don't take very long but in our experience we know what to look for and it is just something as simple like that gone will tell you what you need to know."