Ejwill

Thanks I’ll try to get it going I may keep trying to get the 350 going. When I first started working on it my youngest grandson said Grandaddy if you get it working will you let me have it. So it would be fun to get it running and give It to him, that would really make him happy, and me too. Thanks again for all your help. Let me ask you this, jumping straight to the starter, I ran jumper cables straight to the starter to see if it would spin, but not sure if I did it right. I ran the negative cable to the chassis for a ground and hit the starter lug with the positive cable. All it did was click, wasn’t sure if that’s how you do it since it seems to only have a positive lug on it. Thought it could be the starter as someone mentioned earlier. Since it won’t turn over now.

I’ll do it, yeah I hope this one will last a long time or at least as long as I do. One question, is a Honda rubicon a lot different than the 350 rancher mechanically. I didn’t know if some of the parts are interchangeable or not. I know it is a 250 and mine was a 350 my son has the rubicon. Said it wouldn’t crank, the grandsons said the battery was dead, I told them that’s a good reason it won’t crank. I’m going to charge it and see what happens. Don’t know how long the spark plug has been in it or how old the gas is. Figure if it won’t crank after charging it it has to be no spark or no fuel, to start with anyway. Thanks for all the help and sticking with me I’ve learned a lot and enjoyed the lessons and help. Might be working on my son’s quad next I hope with better results. Talk with y’all later, thanks again. Jeff

Well, I guess I’ll be leaving, I got a good deal on a Honda foreman 500es 4x4 and bought it . This guy works on atv’s for a living and said when he gets through with some other projects he may want mine for parts or to fix. So I guess I’m finished with mine we’ve been working on. Just want to say a big BIG THANKYOU for all the help I feel like I’m loosing some friends. I’ll miss ‘seeing ‘ you on here. Have a good one and be safe. Thank you again. If something happens to this one, heaven forbid, I may be back for some help. Bye for now, Jeff.

That was the reading across the battery terminals. On the battery itself, no wiring just the battery’s voltage dropped to next to nothing. Thanks for the replies.

Been going to Doctors all day today. Will get to it in few minutes If it doesn’t recover to the 13 v. I’m ordering a new one today . Got to get it going . When I held the start button down the volts drop to 2 or less. I guess it has to be the battery. I’ll order one tonight. Thanks for your help.

I unhooked everything from the battery and have it on charge. I’m going to charge it for a longer time this time then hook it back up and try it again. Going to check the battery voltage across the poles before I try to crank it and if it doesn’t crank I’ll check it to see if it pulled the battery down any if that draws it down much I’m going to get another battery. My charger will usually tell if the battery is bad. It hasn’t done that. As far as charging it goes in percentages 25, 50, 75, 100. It says it’s 100% now but I’m going to leave it on for a while longer. Then check the voltage across the poles before trying to crank it again, then try to crank it again and see if that pulls the battery down much. If it drops to 11 or so I think the battery is not able to hold a charge. I’ll just put a new one in and see what it does. I don’t think it should draw a battery down like that just turning the starter. If it does crank on the first try I’ll check I’ll check the battery voltage then also. I think if it will crank I’ll be able to get the gears to work. One of the poles is damaged some the bolt that screwed into the pole stripped out and I had to put a larger bolt in it. I don’t know if that damage would affect it or not, it’s still making good contact. I found a square nut in an old battery and put another bolt in using the square nut in the pole instead of screwing a bolt directly into the pole like it came. It had the place to put a nut, the batteries I’ve seen always came with a nut and bolt for both poles. Thanks to you all for the help maybe it’ll work out.

I unhooked everything from the battery and have it on charge. I’m going to charge it for a longer time this time then hook it back up and try it again. Going to check the battery voltage across the poles before I try to crank it and if it doesn’t crank I’ll check it to see if it pulled the battery down any if that draws it down much I’m going to get another battery.

I got it cranked and manually shifted the gears. I think it shifted all five, it felt like it, but it was hard to tell without moving on it. Now I can’t get it to crank, the battery seems to be the problem it will try to crank but when it doesn’t , I try again and the battery starts clicking if I hold the started switch down it starts clicking rapidly but the motor will not turn over. I checked the voltage across the battery poles after trying to crank it and it showed 11.4 volts. The battery isn’t very old bought it when starting on the quad. But I guess that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be bad, not holding a charge. Think I should try a new battery? Something is going on with it. It sounds like it’s coming from behind the positive terminal. There’s a lot of electrical components back there but I don’t have a clue. Thanks for your help.

I’ll jack it up and give it a try, it’ll be Sunday or maybe late Saturday before I can get to it. Dove season starts tomorrow and bow deer season starts the next Saturday. Got to get this thing going, I could sure us it.

Well as I said I got it in neutral and rolled it back into the garage. The battery was dead I left the switch on, after trying the electric shift. So charged it up, came back in the garage, as I rolled by I thought I’m going to try one more time and the thing cranked right up. So Now I guess the mystery deepens. I almost fell out of my chair. What do you think now. Continue trying the gears?

I’ll try getting it in neutral tomorrow and see if it will roll. We had a tropical storm go over today. Lost power so I needed one more heavy duty extension cord for the generator. Got out in this crap and got home and the power was back on. But I was glad I didn’t have to use it.

Yeah, I thought it should at least roll over with the rope crank but it wouldn’t budge. Learned a lot from you all. Thanks again.

Well, all I can say is thank you to MECH and GW for sticking with me all this time. I got it to shift from neutral to first so I rode it around the house, it would shift from first to neutral with electric shift. But that’s all I could get. I rode it reving it up trying to get it to shift to other gears which it would not. Then while riding around the house it just knock off on me and is locked up as tight as a drum. Don’t know what happened but it will not turn over and I tried pulling the rope starter and couldn’t get it to budge, I could not get it to roll over at all. If the engine is locked up I guess I’m through with this thing. Told my wife it was a waste of time and she said well , you learned a lot and met some really good people and I have to agree, you have been great helping me all this time. And I’m sorry for wasting your time. But it was great working with y’all. You are great people and I wished it had turned out better with the quad but I guess it is just scrap now. Maybe some of the parts can fit my son’s Quad. Thanks again y’all are fantastic people, it’s good to know there are some still out there. EJ (Jeff)

Ok, thanks I’ll give it a try in the morning, it felt good just to get it to move maybe It’ll get better. Thanks a lot for all the help.

I got the cover to finally go flush . I torqued the bolts and was still getting 5 gears up and back to neutral I put it on the ground and cranked it up and put it into first gear. I was able to ride it around the yard but couldn’t get it into but first gear. I thought I should try adjusting the clutch, but the adjustment shaft was hard to turn after loosening the lock nut. I don’t know if something moved on the shift shaft like that ball adapter or not. I didn’t think it should be that hard to turn . I rode it a few minutes and stopped it completely and then tried to shift to second with the manual shifter. But all I could get was first gear, I was rocking it but it just would not shift. So I don’t know, it was shifting while jacked up and moving the tires. But on the ground and rocking it would not shift past first. It will shift from neutral to first with the electric shifter but only to first and back to neutral. Thought we had it there for a while.

If I take the ball adapter off the cover will go right on flush but with it on I can’t get it to line up so that it goes on flush. Is there something I could be doing wrong with the ball adapter. I can leave everything on except it and it goes right on like it’s supposed to. About to get fed up with it. I don’t know if I’m putting it on wrong the spring goes toward the inside or out toward the clutch adjustment. The manual I have doesn’t show or tell anything about it. Thanks for any help.

I’m hoping the parts get here soon, ready to give it another try. Hopefully without screwing it up this time. If I get everything lined up like you said with the Vaseline I hope it will go on right. Thanks.

Yeah, after I found the photo of the cover I figured it was right, and wasn’t the problem. Thanks for reply.

Here’s a photo of the cover. It shows the crack and the position of the bearing. You can ignore the damage to the seal on the bearing I did that after the fact, just to see if it would go any deeper into the recessed area. I figured it couldn’t have hurt anything. I had already ordered a new bearing anyway. The way it broke on the centrifugal clutch side made me think it had to be somewhere around the bearing or hitting something else over there.

Thanks Y’all I appreciate it, one question though the bearing that fits in the cover. Does it fit flush with the cover when pressed into the cover or is it pressed deeper into the cover. When I took the cover off for the first time the bearing was stuck on the shaft of the centrifugal clutch and I had to pull it off with a puller. I thought maybe it was the bearing not seating properly that might be keeping the cover from going on as it should. I still didn’t see anywhere the cover was hitting that would have caused it not to have gone on easily. That bearing being stuck on that shaft was why it was so hard to come off the first time. I thought maybe it not being pressed deep enough into the cover might have been the reason the cover was binding. I don’t have a press so had to put it in by hand. It stopped flush with the cover, didn’t know it it was supposed to go deeper into the recessed area or not. I’ll send a picture of the break and where the bearing is later this morning it’s 0400 right now, so it will be a little later before I get to it .Thanks again so much for the help.

Well, you know what that means. I did something really stupid, that I was told not to do. But I couldn’t resist, I was so close with-in 1/8 of an inch on the cover and so I tried to pull it up with the bolts. It was so close I thought maybe I’d get by with it but noooo the cover cracked almost in half. I’m sorry for not listening but I got in a hurry and screwed up. It was binding on something and I couldn’t find what it was . No scratches rubs nothing. I went ahead and got another one on the way I couldn’t go this far and not give it another try. Y’all have been too good to me to just quit. Mech you told me once if it came off ok it should go back ok. The first time I took it off I had to use a block of wood and hit the cover to get it off. I should have mentioned it but didn’t think it was important at the time. I have looked several times and can’t find where it binding. And by the way do y’all know a trick to keep the ball retainer and spring to stay in place while you are assembling the front cover on the motor. If you bump anything it falls off. I will try not to do anything stupid like that again, but I can’t promise it won’t happen that’s just me. Thanks for everything, y’all have been great. It’s really good to be able to ask someone about things like this, I don’t have anyone any more since my Dad died in January of 2011. He used to could fix anything, then in his late fifties / early 60s he got dementia and then Alzheimer’s after that he could barely screw in a light bulb. So I appreciate y’all helping me through this. Thanks so much.

I put it in neutral a while ago and the tires spun forward freely, if that’s what you mean. I could shift up to fifth and back to neutral, I still had to roll the tires to get the gears to shift all the way. But it would go all the way up and back down using the manual shifter.

Ok, the reason the nut looks like it’s not far up on the shaft threads is because the original nut was staked into the threads. I had to grind down some of the threads to get to good threads. I got it to the point I could thread it on by hand, then with a ratchet. There are no threads in front of the nut because I had to remove a lot of them to get the nut to thread on at the first of the shaft. So it’s as good as it will get now on that shaft. The tires turned with a lot of resistance forward and turned more easy backward. Should I continue on or is there something else I need to do. Thanks.

I put it in fifth gear and turned the wheels toward the change clutch rotated clockwise, I also turned the wheels backward and the change clutch turned counterclockwise. So the wheels turn backward also. I’m not sure about the change clutch. It doesn’t plate assembly doesn’t look like it’s all the way back I’ll try a photo and see if you can see what I’m

Ok, I checked the plates and all were loose. I decided to loosen all the bolts on the lift plate , taking all the pressure off the springs. I then tightened the bolts back a very little at a time. It took forever it seemed but I got each bolt torqued to correct torque. Now the plates, all of them, are tight and the inner shaft turns with the centrifugal clutch turning. I think that’s what you wanted. The shaft turning when the centrifugal clutch housing turned, the shaft turns now.