ToddW Blog

Recently myself, my brother and a buddy took our Polaris Sportsman ATV’s / Quads to a local river bed (OHV area, almost dry river) for a day of outdoor adventure. Lots of gravel, not really any technical areas but a lot of steep hill climbs and area to do small jumps and tricks.I was lucky enough to not run out of gas even though this time I brought extra!!! That damn 800CC engine sure eats the gas a lot more than my friends’ 500CC so I now always bring spare gas with me wherever it is I go.
Anyway, after a few hours we start heading back to load up and I notice what sounds like rocks hitting my fenders louder than normal.  I stop to check it out and everyone tells me I am crazy and they are just rocks and to keep going… me all the time thinking something’s not right here.  We get back to the trucks and I do a last lap to listen for problems I get about 100ft away and KABOOM my sportsman is NOT happy it will not move anymore.  I’ve just broken the belt or something in the gearbox on my sportsman 800 Mind you it’s under 2 months old and NEVER abused!!!!!!!  Luckily there was enough man power to push it up the ramps into my trailer and we were on our way home.

So, in the end I learned something very important ALWAYS have a spare belt and the tools to change it when on the trail.  It would have been terrible to have been4 hours in a trail and have had to been towed out that entire time!!