I have a 2004 grizzly 660 that my son drives primarily. The last two times he has taken it out and it needed to be washed when he brought it back so i put him to work cleaning it. Each time when he was finished the ATV wouldn’t start. It will turn over but it will not start. I was able to finally get it to start by fully choking it but not giving it any throttle. It would run with full choke but if i tried to give it any throttle or reduce the amount it was choked then it would die. After fighting with it for 10-20 minutes and letting it run with full choke the ATV finally let me give it a little throttle and reduce the choke. If I gave it much throttle at all it would still sputter and die. Then after a little while longer it finally let me give it quite a bit of throttle and started to behave normally.

Could the issue be water getting into the fuel somehow? I have instructed him not to spray the water hose at the carb or the top of the fuel tank where the cap is but it still didn’t seem to avoid the issue this last time. Is there something else that we should be avoiding when washing the ATV? I hate having to wait for hours after washing it to finally get it started and pulled into the shop.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.