I ride a 2015 touring 1000 with my 7 year old daughter normally on the back. After bashing the underside of my quad repeatedly on rocks during our Drummond Island riding adventure this past spring, to the point that the skid plate was rubbing on the engine block causing serious vibrations throughout the machine, I decided that I needed more ground clearance.
Conveniently, it was right after that when I noticed that one of my factory Polaris tires had a bulge in the sidewall. I took the opportunity to upgrade from the factory 26" tires to 28" Bearclaw HTR radial tires for an extra inch of ground clearance. The Bearclaws are great, although I don’t see what all the fuss is about radial tires, but whatever. The new tires rubbed on the underside of the rear passenger foot rest area, so I needed to fix that.
After much debating over the available lift kit choices I decided on the High Lifter 2" lift because I didn’t want to have to worry about buying HD axles. I bought the lift and installed it. The parts were high quality, the install was quick and easy with only basic tools required, and I was happy with the results. I now had an extra 3 inches of ground clearance over stock, the machine looked way tougher, and I didn’t have a problem clearing good sized rocks in the trail. I do still get a slight rub when I’m really powering over big whoops in the sand, but nothing that I’m worried about. BUT, on my first or second ride after installing the lift, I started noticing that the front wheels (AWD) would engage when I was hard on the throttle and the front end was light, or if I was crawling through deep sand. Basically it happened whenever the front suspension was extended. I changed the front diff oil because I read that dirty oil could cause the symptoms I was experiencing. There were significant amount of shavings on the magnet, so I cleaned the magnet, put the fresh oil in. The problem was still not solved.
I didn’t think I would need axles with just a 2" lift, but it seemed that I was wrong. Back to the internet I go to research HD axles. I decided on Cobra axles because when I called them, a guy answered immediately who sounded like he was working in a shop. He had the answers to all of my questions. There was no answering service, or secretary, or waiting on hold. I like that kind of business. I bought both front axles and they showed up at my door about 5 days later. Again, installation was pretty straight forward. It took me about an hour and a half to do both but I’d never done axles on a quad before. If I had to do it again tomorrow, I could probably swap out both in a half hour. I also drained and refilled the diff oil again, and again there was a significant amount of metal shavings on the magnet. MUCH to my disappointment, the problem was STILL NOT SOLVED!!:pedro:
I was thinking I was going to have to take the diff out and inspect the internals for damage or wear. I did some research and I was all ready to dig in. I decided to try one more thing before taking the drastic step of pulling the diff. I decided to swap out the Demand Drive fluid for Amsoil synthetic tractor/hydraulic transmission fluid 5w30. This time when I drained the oil, there were very few shavings on the magnet (I had only ridden it about a half mile since the last change though). After adding the Amsoil, I took it for a spin and lo-and-behold the quad stays in 2WD when I have the switch in 2WD mode!!!:guitar: Next I checked 4X4, and that works too!! Woohoo!!
Anyway, I’m not sure if it was the Amsoil itself that fixed the problem, or the repeated oil changes that removed all of the friction causing contamination in the oil, but either way, I’m cautiously optimistic that this will be the long term solution. I got the idea to try the Amsoil from this post. So, I’m not the only one for whom this has apparently worked.
The Amsoil hasn’t been trail tested in my rig yet, but I’m looking forward to the next ride now. After my next ride, I’ll check for shavings again, and if it’s clean, I’ll be happy.
On a side note: if anyone needs a set of stock front axles for a Sportsman 1000 with about 1500 miles on them, let me know.
