1996-2000 Polaris Sportsman 335/500 Service Manual

Friday evening went riding, rode for a good hour or so everything was fine. I went to take a short ride to the restroom (less than 100 yds away) and all of the sudden everything flickered and then just died out. Accompanying the problem I noticed the killswitch completely locked up. Once daylight hit took the killswitch apart to find it had shorted out and melted the plastic inside. Has anyone else had anything similar to this and if so what did you do to fix the situation? I have a new killswitch on the way to replace the obvious problem but was wondering could there be a bigger issue at hand. We tested with a voltage meter to make sure everything was still getting power from the battery and as far as we could tell it was.
Any advice/info would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thanks.

Anyone know what the fuse terminal marked UNSWITCH  does  .  Even with the key off it is causing a drain on my battery and I'm trying to figure out  what that terminal goes to.  It's a 10 amp fuse. If I pull it the "short" goes away.  Thanks in advance.

Had a spark-plug break off, had to pull the head to get it extracted. Where the heck is the timing mark on the crank? Do I need to pull the stator or flywheel to find it? When I pulled the head I had the mark on the cam lined up pretty good but I cant remember if it was perfect and don't want to reassemble a tooth off and have to go back through the bear of pulling this thing back apart.
Thanks guys!

Hi I just got an Polaris sportsman 500 4x4 ATV the other day. I got it real cheap but I started to go into it because it didn't have compression so I bought a new piston and ring kit for it and installed it, but now when I try to start it all it does is shoot fire out the exhaust or the intake of the carburetor. And a timing is top dead center.;I think I can't really tell another way if it is or not. when I put it together I made sure to piston was on top and the cam lobes where facing down where are the cam sprocket is facing up. It has gas and spark. It did start a couple minutes ago but it didn't stay running and now it won't start. Do you think the valve need to be adjusted more to close better?I'm fixing to try that out and if that don't work what is the problem? Also I made sure everything was together good and right and change the oil and changed out the radiator fluid.

I just rebuilt my 03 sportsman 400. Put everything back together added oil per the manual. Pinched off the oil tank vent line 2" away ran for 45 seconds then cut it off. Check oil level and it was still way high so I wasn't confident that it primed so I did it again. Checked again and it's the same. Remove the oil filter and it is dry. I did the procedure again and the same results.

I'm worried to keep trying this as the only oil in the engine is what I used to lubricate the parts when reassembling the piston. The crankcase was drained as well.
I Removed the oil tank and checked all the lines for obstructions and the screen filter and the vent hose and everything is clear. I even pulled a small vacuum on the oil tank while it was pulled off to make sure there were no leaks. The dipstick cap was on tight so I'm not sure why this thing is not priming.

Anyone have any suggestions. I thought about pre-priming the oil lines from the oil tank to the crankcase to hopefully help the system prime. I'd like to be able to add some oil to the crankcase to so I wouldn't feel so bad about running the engine for another 60 seconds without oil. I dropped just a little bit of oil in the spark plug hole to help condition the sleeve right now.

What do I do? Anyone had or heard of an oil pump failure on these. Btw oil pump is working fine before I did the top-end rebuild and the oil pump was not touched.

Please help!!! Thanks all for any and all help.