Mech

I knew that snow was trouble !

Oh. that sounds like a good deal from Ebay.. I'd jump at that. Then it's just a quick swap job.. No wondering about worn things and hassling around finding parts.. I'd be inspecting all the rubber bits on it, like the rubber boots on the drive lines. Give them a bit of a twist and bend looking for cracks in the bottom of the corrugations. The carby has a rubber diaphragm in the top of it, I'd pull that out and give it a bit of a gentle stretch to see if it's got tears or is going to tear. There are rubber hoses to the fuel pump and tap that are probably getting old by now, and are pretty cheap to replace with fuel or vacuum hose from an engineering supply place.Those brake hoses at that age are probably suspect if they've never been changed, apart from the internal delamination and swelling they get cracks you can see on the outside. The front suspension bush bolts have a habit of seizing into the bushes, then turning in the chassis till they wear the bolt holes in the chassis, then they start hammering in there and really wear things up bad. It would be a good simplish job to take the bolts out and grease them. When you tighten them back up you do it with the weight on the wheels because the rubber bushes aren't meant to turn on the bolts, the rubber's meant to flex as the wheel goes up and down. It's important to tighten them up the last turn or two in their sitting position so they aren't preloaded with twist/flex. If you drive it up onto a couple of thick planks or hunks of wood to get a bit of ground clearance it makes that easy. In theory the rear suspension should be at risk of doing the same thing, but I've never seen it on the back.. but you could pull the bolts and grease them as well.. then they won't be seized if you ever have to do the bushes or take it apart. You could check all the wheel bearings for play or noises. Grab the wheels top and bottom and try rocking them feeling for play, then give them a spin listening for noise, and turn them while twisting them top and bottom(to apply a load on the bearings) feeling for roughness. You could adjust the valve clearance because that doesn't seem to get done ever.. Air cleaner element can be cleaned, oiled and reused. Oil the gear change and brake lever pivot.. I've seen a lot of those worn out. Cables are nylon lines these days and aren't meant to be lubed. Inspect the chassis for rust, especially on the bottom rails. Inspect the wiring looking for frayed insulation, tape it back up and secure it so it doesn't move if you find any. There are small struts under the front bodywork, from near your knees, they run into the bottom chassis, I've seen those two bottom bolts rust solid to the bit's of tube they go through, the tube's a part of the strut. The bolts go through about two inches of tube and when they seize, they really seize, a bit of grease on those bolts saves a real sh** of a job if they seize in and those two bottom bolts are the best place to undo if you want the front body work off. All the small bolts holding the plastics on are made soft so they can be drilled out if/when they seize up or get chewed screwdriver slots. Hope that all helps.. I've been fixing and owned suzukis for ..err.. about forty years haha.

The 1999-2004 suzuki manual has a detailed description of overhauling that diff. The special tools could be improvise with threaded rod and washers/plates, and feeler gauges instead of the DTI gauge.. There is a bit more back and forwarding than car diffs, but it's not really as complicated as they make it sound. Any competent/experienced mechanic should be able to do that.

And what about the brakes ? Do the pistons slide in the cylinder ? Your bike looks tidy enough. It's probably worth repairing. The diff comes out easily. You could take the diff assembly to a bike shop or find someone to do the work on it, a mechanic that's familiar with diff assembly would be best. Perhaps take it apart yourself first to check it's not got too many broken bits. If you strip it you lay everything out on a bench in the pattern it is in the bike, left parts to the left, right to right, front to front. The good thing is it's not like a diff in a car where if you get the adjustments wrong it will whine bad and wear out early. That front diff only has any load on it when you're using the 4x4. And most of the time, if you just fitting new bearings, nothing else needs adjusting. I dare say that even a new set of gears(OEM ones) and bearings will be ok with all the old adjustment shims.

I just had a look at parts for the front diff.. and the prices aren't too bad.. $500 aussie for the two main gears. Over here, that would be about 1/24 of the cost of a new quad. You never know how much it's going to cost,(or how little), till you pull it apart and inspect it. It could be that a bearing has collapsed and it's letting the gears skip..

Second hand diff ?

No trouble Chris.. Have fun... but don't get caught !

You're talking about using an empty location in the fuse box I presume ? Haven't seen a fusebox off one of those things, but generally you get two new terminals of the right sort, connect wires to them, then insert the terminals into the fuse box till they click into place. Most terminals push in from the back where the wires are. If you want to pull an existing terminal out to connect an extra wire to it(or to see what sort of terminals they use), then you look in from the front and back and identify the clip they use to lock the terminals in. Some things have a metal tag that's part of the terminal, in which case you slide a pin in to force/bend the tag flat, pull the terminal and then rebend the tag so it will lock again, or they have a plastic tag that's part of the box, in which case you either slide a pin in between the plastic and the terminal to bend the plastic tag aside while you pull the terminal, or you have to use the point of the pin to stick into the plastic tag and lever it aside while you pull the terminal. Unbolt the box so you can flip it over and look down beside the terminals front and back and you should be able to see what sort it has.

Loud clonking sounds like a tooth off a gear. Just the fact it's got flakes of metal(which could come off a bearing), on the magnet, means it's time for a strip down and find where that's coming from.

Yeah you can change back to petroleum oil. No worries. It's done all the time. Get the motor hot, drain the oil, change the oil filter, and then put in your new oil. The tiny amount that sits in the cam box and oil galleries etc is not enough to cause a problem.

Drain the oil and check it for metal flakes, or lumps.

Did you check there wasn't hydraulic pressure keeping the brakes on ? By loosening the bleed nipple.. Brake hoses when they get old can start to delaminate inside and a flap of rubber can start acting like a one way valve stopping the brake fluid returning, or, the hoses swell up and the pressure you apply with the lever is enough to force fluid down to the wheel, but the springs aren't strong enough to make it return. You might have forced the fluid back now in the process of getting the drum off. I doubt you need any of those parts you mention. If the shoes have their friction material still attached then they won't be the problem. You can check the cylinders are free by using two screwdrivers, one on each side tucked into the lip on the backing plate, and levering against the shoes. By levering harder on one side at a time alternatively, the shoes will move left and right by making both pistons in the cylinder slide across left and right. If they slide they are won't be the trouble either. Put the drum back on, pump the brakes hard, check whether the brakes are jammed on, if they are, undo the brake bleeder and see if they free up.

Are you sure it's not running in safe mode since the overheating issue ? Some of those things, if there's a problem that could damage the engine, they restrict the revs until you've fixed the problem, and in a lot of American stuff, taken the bike to a dealer to cancel the safe mode. I suppose you have read the manual regarding this problem ..

Yeah I looked it up Ajm. Not something we get here. I don't think you are going to get a manufacturers wiring diagram Jerry, and there are no generic wiring diagrams for something like that switch, or bike. You could take the switch apart and you should be able to see where the wires go, check which wire/pin goes to which switch and when they are connected or isolated from one other, then pull your old switch apart(if you have one), and do the same with it. If you don't have the old switch you will have to try and figure which wire on the bike goes to the power for the headlights and to the headlights, which wire goes to the starter, and which wires kill the ignition and whether the kill function is by shorting two pins/wires or by disconnection them.

If you look in the workshop manual it says to use regular old petroleum oil. A lot of the more modern oils, whether synthetic or petroleum, have additives in them that aren't really doing anything useful in a motorbike engine, and which could even be doing harm. I stick with petroleum oil in my bikes, and of the spec they stipulate.

Never heard of such a thing. How many wires on the vehicles kill switch ?

The suzukis hold a lot of oil up in the valve case. It could leak a lot of oil down the guides. Given the circumstances you describe, I doubt it's the rings. Oil's cheap..ish.. cheaper than getting your motor worked on by a shop. And no I don't think a smoking suzuki is a common thing.. I've had lots through my workshop and started them cold and I don't remember ever seeing one smoke bad at cold start.

You need to tell us what vehicle the kill switch is off, and what it's going on.

If the 10 grade oil you are thinking of using isn't synthetic, then you shouldn't mix it with the synthetic oil that's in your motor. Perhaps it would be easier, and give peace of mind, to do an oil and filter change right now. Then you can put regular petroleum 10w30 in it and have some to top up in future. Petroleum oil's about half the price of synthetic. If you have to buy much synthetic(due to packaging practices) to do the top up, it won't cost much more to buy a pack of petroleum and do a change.

Do those things have two throttle cables going into the carb ? Perhaps one bike has a different/faulty cable splitter box. Perhaps the cables need readjusting for the different carbies. Did you try the other bike, with the other carby ? How did it go?

Since it's got synthetic oil in it now, you need to top up with synthetic oil. It doesn't have to be the same brand, but you should try to get an oil with the same rating... Probably SF or SG. If you want to change to a straight petroleum oil(non-synthetic) you can at the next oil and filter change.

First thing is probably to undo the bleed nipple on the left front wheel. If fluid comes out and then the wheel turn, you have a problem in the brakes hydraulic system. If releasing the hydraulic pressure makes no difference then it will probably be a wheel bearing, or one brake shoe has jammed itself on. The lining can come off the brake shoes and jamb up in there. You could try undoing the wheelnuts and taking the wheel off, and then try to get the brake drum off. If it's a bearing that's the problem, then the brake drum should wriggle around and come off fairly easily. Brake drums get a bit of wear where the shoes run on them, and it's sometimes necessary to manually release the self adjusting brakes to pull the drum off, but if taking the wheel off allows the drum to move in and out a little, and wobble around when you grip it top and bottom or front and rear, then it probably won't be the brakes causing the problem. If the brake drum seems locked solid with the wheel off, and can't be moved in any direction then it's probably a brake shoe jammed in there. To fix that you manually release the self adjusters on the brakes and pull the drum off. If the drum moves with the wheel off, I'd be suspecting a wheel bearing. If possible rotate and pull the brake drum and it should come off. If it comes out a little but then jams and won't turn, you need to use a small screwdriver to hold the brake adjuster's ratchet off while you back off the brake adjustment. Then pull and rotate the drum and it will come off. After that you take the nut off the center of the wheel's hub and that hub should pull off the axle/drive shaft. Undo the brake hose, top and bottom suspension ball joints and the steering ball joint, and then the bearing housing will come away from the bike. Then check the axle turns in the front diff, and check the wheel bearings rotate or not in the housing you pulled off the bike. The wheel bearings are held in by big circlips behind seals. Lever the seals out, use long nosed pliers or proper circlip pliers to remove the circlips, then use a hammer and punch through the centre of one bearing, to knock the opposite bearings out, being careful to move the bearings a little at a time on opposite sides so as to not harm the housing.

https://www.quadcrazy.com/files/category/3-yamaha-atv/ Probably a manual there somewhere.

When the motor's running, the vacuum is in pulses but not as deeper vacuum as what you can suck, so in operation the fuel flow is more of a trickle...If you put the vacuum hose back on, and hold the fuel hose horizontally in a bottle with the motor idling, there should be a steady approximately half flow of fuel. By that I mean it will be sort of half the hoses diameter, but trickling out steadily..

Turn the fuel tap to prime if it's a vacuum operated tap, pull the fuel pump's vacuum hose off the carby and suck hard on it, and when you let the vacuum off the fuel should come out of the fuel hose as a full diameter slug of petrol. Be cautious when you suck the hose because one possible problem is that the fuel pump's diaphragm might have a hole in it and you might get a mouthful of petrol. If the fuel delivery is a full hose diameter pump of fuel, then the pump works. You need to have the hose laying horizontally into a bottle to get a good idea if it's a full flow. If that works then you need to check there is plenty of vacuum at the carby and that it's getting to the pump. There might be a hole in the vacuum hose.