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Summary: Check the front drive of an ATV, including the front drive on a Polaris 500; learn how with tips from our expert ATV mechanic in this free ATV Maintenance and repair video.
Tom Roland is a BMW, Ducati, and Polaris certified mechanic and the head mechanic at cottonwood motor sports in Cottonwood, Arizona. He currently works on ATV's and motorcycles.read more
"On behalf of Expert Village, my name is Tom Roland here 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. There are a couple of U-joints on the Polaris for the front drive and they don't have brackets on them any more but they have a pin that locks them on. You need to make sure that they are not all rusty and that there is no damage and that the U-joints don't look like there is no play back and forth in them to where they are going bad. This is a new unit so we don't see a lot of problems with the U-joints on the Polaris but it is all stuff that has to be looked at because the prevention and maintenance cures a lot. It is a lot cheaper to fix it now than it is to fix it after it breaks and it's gone away. This clear tube right here is the vent tube for the front differential, front gear case and this allows expansion and contraction of the air due to temperature changes and altitude changes so that it equalizes outside. It goes up high so that it keeps water from getting in the gear case. But people sometimes go through real deep water on these and it is possible for water to get in there. The other thing that you want to do is make sure the line isn't damaged and that it is still attached to the gear case because if it's not, that just makes it a lot easier for dirt and water to get inside that gear case. "