Hello, John Talley here with partzilla.com. Today we're going to be working on our 2011
Polaris Sportsman 850. In particular, we're going to be looking at the front ball joint.
That little booger right there. We actually have four of them, there are two
on either side. So I did a pre-ride inspection the other day, when you bring up the machine
you could rock the front tire from side-to-side and it really looks like it needs to be replaced.
So, we're going to bring this up in the air, get that front tire pulled off, and look into
getting this thing replaced. So let's get started.
That was fun. Now, look at that. Wasn't a whole lot left holding that in.
Alright, our pivot points up top at the frame? I'd say those bushings are worn out as well,
so we're going to replace those too. Looking at the end of those little zerk fittings,
where you're supposed to grease this? I don't think they've ever been used. That just doesn't
sound very healthy does it? Alright, so let's just go ahead and get those
out. What you can do to get to that front one--
what you have up there are two 15mm bolts. Feed your extension through here, put on your
socket, and then thread it through onto that front one.
What I'm doing now is just knocking the bolt out.
Alright, go ahead and shake her out of there. Now I'll take this and get some of that dirt
knocked off of it and then we'll go through the process of taking out that ball joint
and possibly replacing these inner bushings because they are dry as a bone.
Alright guys, we've got our press moved right over here. The first thing we need to do is
just go ahead and remove the circlip and then we can actually push this thing through. You
may not have one of these things sitting in your garage. This is the correct way to do
it, but I would imagine if you hit it hard enough you could probably drive it out with
a hammer, but I don't particularly want to show you how to do that.
We're going to show you the right way to do it.
First thing we need to do is take of the circlip on the end.
This takes a little bit of manipulation. You need a collar to drive it through so that
collar needs to be a little bit bigger than the backside just so it has got a little space
to drive it through. I'm cheating a little bit. I'm actually using
a socket to drive it from the top. Get all that balanced together, and we can
start driving it through. A fair amount of pressure. It's not extreme.
Like I said, you could probably drive it through with a hammer. Now I got it broken loose and
I think we can finish it up just going directly on the end of it.
There. Told you. Now, we can grab our new one and get it pushed
back in there. Alright, just do it until she bottoms out.
All we need to do is install our snap ring just like that. Make sure she's in the groove
all the way around. It feels a lot better than that old one--
the way it should be. Alright, let's take a look next at our pivot
points up at the frame. To do that, let's bring back over our teardown bench, grab those
bolts, and see just how much play there was in there.
Aright, so let's take a look at our bushings now. Just grabbing one of the bolts that was
holding it together, and see how much play is in there?
Obviously this thing has never been greased. That zerk fitting is completely clogged up,
so that made it wear. So let's go ahead and knock it apart so I
can show you the different pieces it's made up of.
Alright. You've got your outer bushing, which is basically a piece of plastic. Then you
have this inner, actually the bushing itself, which is actually metal. It's covered over
with grime which you're going to see. This should have grease all around it, which would
allow it to pivot back and forth instead of wearing because there was no grease. Just
this mud and muck. So what it did in stead of pivoting in here like that, it is pivoting
on this, and that's what caused it to wear. That's why it's really important to make sure
you keep these things greased, otherwise this is what you end up with.
Go ahead and finish knocking the other section out.
So, what to do next? We want to go ahead and replace all of these
pieces: the inner bushing, the outer bushing, and then as well as the main bolt that goes
straight through it. So give me a few minutes, let me go get these
parts, and then we'll start reassembling it. Alright guys, I got the rest of the assembly
pulled apart and cleaned up. I went to the stock room, picked up our new bushings, pivot
pins, and our three bolts. I mean that should really get us back to square one again.
So, basically assembly is just the reverse of how we pulled it apart, but we want to
make sure that we coat each piece with a little bit of grease as we're putting it back together.
Then actually fill up the entire junction with a zerk grease gun. So let's get this
thing put back together. Go ahead and knock in just one of your bushings
to begin with in each one. Get those centered back up. Like that.
Just to show you the difference, look at that. It doesn't move compared to what we did have.
Alright, putting her back together is just the opposite of the way we took it apart.
I'll show you a little trick. You've got a blind bolt like that where you can't get in
there to hold it, a little bit of electric tape, just to the edge of the bolt. It doesn't
take a lot. You want to be able to take the socket off so you just run right up to that
edge. Just like that.
Alright, we want to go ahead and fill up those areas. You want to do this until you barely
see it squirting out the sides. Remember what it sounded like before? How
much it moved around? That's what we want. Right there.
Alright, that's all the way through. You want to make sure that you've got it where that
groove was so the bolt can go through. Alright guys, I've gotten everything tightened
back down and I went ahead and put this little boot axle protector-- the one on the front.
As you can tell, it really straightened out the problem. With this particular setup, for
this particular machine this time, it was just the lower ball joint as well as the lower
control arm bushings that were worn out. May want to take a look at your top one as well
as your top bushings. Make sure you get in there and get those greased, other wise they're
going to suffer the same fate as the ones down at the bottom.
Listen, if you need any of the parts come see us at partzilla.com. If there's anything
that I missed, you couldn't tell what I was doing, or if you had a question about it,
just leave it in the comment section below and I'll try to answer it. And until the next
video we just wanted to say thanks for watching and keep coming back.