Bluezulu49

Hi guys. Bike has come back to me as Turbo is house renovating at the moment. First thing I noticed was that the battery terminals were crusty. So we cleaned them and the wire terminals with a brass wire brush, coated them with dielectric grease and reconnected them. When we ran the engine the voltage actoss the battery measured 14.5. With the engine off the battery measured over 13. I just measured the battery voltage again and find it is 12.99, pretty high I think since its 4 days since the engine ran. I looked at the voltage regulator and found that one of the fixing bolts was snapped off in the frame. So I drilled it out with an undersize (4.5mm ) bit and the broken part came out. I tried a 6mm bolt in the hole and found that the threads were stripped. This left me with a dilemma. The next size bolt we have is 8mm but if I used this I would have to enlarge the mounting holes in the current and any replacement voltage regulator. This does not seem to be a good idea for a machine that will work in a very high humidity environment so I decided to go for 7mm bolts instead. The problem now is that 7mm bolts are like hens teeth over here so I am waiting for a delivery from England which should arrive this week. When they come I will re-attach the regulator and measure the output voltage again. If It remains high I will replace the regulator. Since the regulator was not making good mechanical contact with the frame I wonder if this caused it to overheat and fail. I would welcome advice on this. I had a look at powersportsnation for the used regulator but it appears that they only trade with USA and not overseas.

I have been unwell for a while but have now recovered and have come back to give some closure to the brake saga in the hope of helping someone else. We fitted 2 new brake lines from the master cylinder to the slaves and used new banjo bolts and washers. These items were sourced from CMSNL in Holland. We carried out a gravity bleed by just opening one nipple at a time and allowing brake fluid to dribble out into a container until there were no more bubbles. Then we shut off the nipple and carried out a conventional bleed. We then repeated this on the other side. One complication was that the bleed nipples appeared to be imperial rather than metric so we had to use an old magneto spanner to open and shut the nipples. This procedure worked first time and the disc brakes appear to be working fine. I examined the old washers and banjo bolts and they appear to be fine with no signs of pitting. My conclusion is that the lower brake line which tees into the one from the master cylinder was perished and was expanding rather than passing on hydraulic pressure to the wheel calipers. Thanks again for all your help guys. Bluezulu49.

The studs as supplied from Highlifter seem to be ok. The original wheel nuts are in a bad way and I have already sourced new ones. Many thanks for the info re checking the pressure by clamping the hoses. Brain not working too well today as we have had our first snow of the winter and the temperature is just above freezing at 2.7 C, 37F, a big change from earlier in the week when it was above 10C, 50F even at night.

Hi Fish. The outer ring in the picture is a spacer which comes with the brake kit. It sits on the wheel studs and is bolted tight to the hub when the wheel is bolted on. They are both currently held in place on the wheel studs by one bolt only to keep them out of the way. The original wheel nuts are in very poor condition and I am waiting for replacements which should have been here yesterday. The spacer ring is not threaded and is a fairly loose fit on the wheel studs. This is still very much a work in progress. More worrying is the fact that I cannot build pressure in the braking system. The manual I have says to bleed the furthest wheel, ( the left hand one when sitting on the quad), first and while I have got a stream of brake fluid coming out with no bubbles on both callipers, there is no pressure on the brake lever and the brake pads have not moved up to the discs. I had a look at some youtube videos and have followed the suggestion that I put a spring clamp on the brake lever to hold it in the pulled position for some time, 24 to 48 hours, to see if that improves things. If it does not I will disconnect the brake pipe from the master cylinder and see if the lever is generating any fluid pressure using my finger as a gauge. There are no fluid leaks that I can see from the brake lines. The fluid on the floor under the bike spilled when we disconnected the drum brakes. It appears from talking to Turbo that the front brakes failed pretty well as soon as he unloaded the quad from his van when he purchased it. The master cylinder and lever both appear to be new and are I suspect from China. Photos attached showing the spacer pushed up against the hub and the master cylinder.

So Turbo came home this evening and we decided to attack the hubs. He produced a 10.5mm hss drill bit and we bored out the holes in the hubs. We pressed the new wheel studs partly in using a vice and then drove them home by resting a lump hammer on the inside of the stud and hitting it with another lump hammer. This drove all of the studs hopme and so the rebuild can continue.

Just to be sure I measured all of the new bolts and they were pretty uniform at 10.85mm so the one I tried to install is not an outlier. In the meantime I will try freezing them to see how much they contract.

We received new front drive shafts two days ago from Niche Industries. I fitted them yesterday, refitted the knuckles and replaced the outer track rod ends. Today I had a look at the hubs and specifically the High Lifter wheel bolt and disc carriers which are supposed to be a press fit into the hubs. My problem is that the splines do not match. I drove one bolt in about 1.5 mm but could not get it in any further. I took it out again and measured across the splines on the bolt. The measurement on the old bolt is 10.48mm and that of the new is 10.86 mm. What should I do to make the bolts fit? It would be relatively easy to reduce the diameter of the splined part of the bolt but if I do this and subsequently need to change the hubs I could be faced with the problem of bolts being loose in the new hubs. Has anyone else had this problem and if so how did they fix it? Picture of old and new bolts attached.

Clean up of the hubs and one knuckle. The other one is still attached to the quad and will be removed later.

I put the hub in the freezer overnight and when I took it out this morning I heated the ring with a blowlamp but it still would not shift. So I put it in the vice and tapped the ring with a chisel I keep for such work. It took a while and quite a bit of force but I got the ring off. It seems to me that someone was here before and decided to tighten the hub in the bearing by centre punching it. See picture. I used some 240 grade sandpaper, 3 in 1 oil, some 400 grade wet and dry paper and a lot of elbow grease to get the bearing inner to be a sliding fit on the hub. The bearing itself is pretty rough so we are going to replace both. The hub on the other side came off with hand pressure once I took off the brake drum. Fortunately the bearings are available locally. Ironically they are coming from the guy who sold the quad to Turbo.

I spent some time working on the quad this week and after a bit of effort got the castle nuts off the top and bottom knuckle ball joints. The nut on the track rod end was a different matter and I could not budge it. This evening Turbo came home and we tried it again. The result is that I now have a swan neck 1/2" ratchet handle! This led us to give up so we unscrewed the track rod instead. Then it was new tool time and we used our new pickle fork balljoint separator to undo the top and bottom balljoints. We put the knuckle in our Black and Decker workmate and drove out the wheel hub using an old (imperial) socket. It came out on the first blow but the inner ring of the knuckle bearing is still attached to the hub. I applied a little heat to the ring but it shows no sign of moving. I will try it again tomorrow. Turbo has a picture of the removed hub and the knuckle and he will post it later.

Hi Shade. Drive shaft is a sliding fit in the hub and I can move it in and out about an inch easily. I suspect that the hub has rusted itself to the inner ring of the knuckle bearing.

In Turbos absence I am starting the front disc conversion on the TRX450. Taking the right front wheel off was easy and then the trouble started. I could not open the castle nut holding the wheel hub onto the drive shaft. A session with a blowlamp, a few squirts of a "rust dissolver", a second session with the blowlamp and the application of a long bar and a big hammer finally shifted it. Then I discovered that the wheel hub was stuck in the steering knuckle. Ther drive shaft is movable but the hub seems to have attached itself to the front wheel bearing. Would I be correct in thinking that I need to undo the upper and lower steering swivels and the track rod end swivel in order to push out the wheel hub? I have removed the brake cylinders from the backing plate, disonnected the hydraulics and undone the backing plate screws but am apparently no nearer to getting the wheel hub off. Am I on the right track? Another idea I had was to try pushing it off using a hammer actrion drill in hammer only mode through a hole in the backing plate. I have already tried using a drift and a hammer with no obvious result. PS While taking off the hydraulic lines I think I found his braking problem. The end of the line from one wheel cylinder to another was badly corroded and broke as soon as I tried to unscrew the fixing nut.

Hi Wilson and Shade. Nice to have a reason to be back. From Turbo's description it looks like there there is not much to be done to this machine. Initial inspection seems to indicate that 4 wheel centre covers are required, a new rear brake / reverse lever and the rear brake cover o ring. Fortunately all of these parts appear to be available from Europe. (It's getting very expensive to ship items from the USA to Ireland). Since we refurbished the Trx 300 it has been very reliable and required next to no work. In the meantime we have worked on Trubo's Hanix H09d mini digger and his new wife's Kubota B6000. So we have not been idling in the meantime.

Hi Shade, Funnily enough we had put two O rings on the axle at the brake side but I did remember to take them off before I tried to get the brake off the axle. I could not figure out what was causing the stoppage and took a magnified picture to see if there was anything jamming the bearing. Picture attached. I think the objects at 6 o'clock in the picture are bits of grease. Both of the O rings were perfect and this time I put one on each end of the axle next to the relevant bearing. After the work yesterday I found that the handbrake was not working. Some head scratching later I came to the conclusion that the cable was too long so I had a look in my very modest stash of "stuff which might someday be useful" and found an iron bicycle cable adjuster and two aluminium ones. ( Please note that I operate on the rule that you keep a thing for seven years and if you can find no use for it, keep it for another seven). I did a little fettling of the adjuster and put it on the cable next to the handlebar brake lever. Now we have a working handbrake.

Yesterday the replacement axle and recovered saddle arrived so I got to work. First thing to do was put down cardboard on the gravel. Then I jacked up the rear end of the quad and supported it on timbers. The broken end of the axle is visible. Next I undid the brake cables and cable tied them to the silencer (muffler). Then I undid the wheelnuts on the remaining wheel and removed it and the wheel hub.The drive and brake guards were then removed. Next I separated the brake unit from the swinging arm. This is held on by four nuts. the lower front nut is obscured by the towbar. I did not remove the towbar at this stage as I had difficulty with it previously. More about this later. With the brake separated from the swingarm I loosened the axle locking nuts on that side. These are 41mm nuts and I still have the spanners I bought when we rescued the quad 3 years ago. The brake side nuts were easy.The drive side were much tighter. I had to block one spanner with a piece of timber and use a piece of pipe on the other to open the locknut. See picture. Once the nuts were off the axle came out. This is where the difficulty started. The brake unit is supposed to slide off the axle in one piece. It would not. After a little thought I opened the brake unit, took off the cover, splined drum and brake shoes. The cover was, I thought, in very good condition considering that it now lives on a fairly wet farm. I put the broken axle in a vice and tapped the brake backing plate off using a timber mallet. The plate eventually came away, leaving the bearing stuck on the axle. At this stage my gloves were pretty greasy so there are no pictures from here on. I tapped the bearing off the axle. This took a fair bit of force, (lump hammer and timber mallet), but eventually it came off. When I tried to put the bearing back into the brake backing plate it would not go in, probably because yesterday was the hottest day of the year here with a temperature of about 25C (77F). I put the bearing in the freezer for about 10 minutes and then inserted it in the break backing plate. While I was waiting for the bearing to shrink I installed the axle in the rear drive. After cleaning up the brake pads and the inside of the drum I reassembled the brake unit. When I attempted to put the brake on the axle, it got stuck at the splines and would not go on. So I dismantled the brake again, took the axle out of the quad, padded it and placed it in the vice. I tapped the splined drum onto the axle, a little at a time and then back off. Once I had it fully on the splines it moved back and forth relatively freely. So I re-assembled the brake, put it on the axle, screwed on the retaining nuts and replaced the axle in the quad. In order to get the brake snug against the swinging arm I had removed the splined brake actuator arm. Once I had attached the brake to the swinging arm I found that I could not re-attach the actuator as the towbar was in the way. This led to the previous problem with the towbar. It is clamped on the axle tube by four bolts, two at the front which attach from the bottom and two at the back which attach from the top. All of them screw into captive bolts. My problem was that one of the rear captive bolts was stripped and I had placed a loose nut in the cavity below the captive nut. The bolt initially slackened and then the nut rotated. It took me a while to stop the nut rotating but I eventually got it off. The brake actuator arm was then put back on, followed by the towbar. The rear end of the towbar is a triangular hollow box and it is difficult to hold the loose nut inside it. I managed to get it secured by first tightening the other three towbar bolts and then holding the nut with a bent needlenose pliers. Once the towbar was on it was plain sailing and the wheels were put back on. I hope I have not been too longwinded here and that this information might be of use to someone else. Spot welding the loose nut in the towbar is on Turbo's to do list.

Good to be back. Quad is on its way back to me again!

So times have moved on, Turbo has moved out and now lives on a small farm in the north east of the country. His TRX300 lives there too and has led an uneventful life until yesterday when this happened. As a result I have had no interaction with the quad since I last posted. Have any of you guys ever experienced this kind of failure? Pictures below.

From the number plate in the windscreen its a 1990.

We only got two days pheasant shooting this season due to Corona lockdowns. Last Saturday was our final day and I finally got to ride Turbo's 300. Happy new year from Ireland.

Just want to report that Shade's advice on removing the rocker arm shaft pins worked very well. This week I took the opportunity of a windless day, (no good for fly fishing in a boat ), to take off the cam cover and change the o rings in the rocker arm shafts. It took a while to free the pins using Shade's vice method but they came out and as I suspected the o rings were very hard. There was no elasticity left in them so they both broke as I was taking them off with a pick. The new ones went on fine and I pressed the locking pins back gently using the vice. No pictures I'm afraid as I was working alone. Many thanks again Shade.

Lost the text in the above post. Unfortunately only took one photo of the high undergrowth with a path through it. I was amazed how a single pass of the quad and mower turned an impenetrable jungle of thorny blackberries into an easily walked path. Picture 2 shows the pheasants enjoying a walk in the grass Turbo had just cut and the last picture is of one of the game crops.

I hope these work. Mower Idling

Some more pictures

Turbo is back at work today so I'll take up the story. We went cutting yesterday and it quickly became apparent that having 8 blades rather than 4 was putting an extra load on the engine. We were lucky in that the landowner happened to come by and had an 8mm allen key which we needed to remove the blades. Once the mower was back to 4 blades it ran much better in the high grass. I must say that I was sceptical as to how well the mower might work but Turbo did a great job and it works extremely well. It can cope with nettles, briars ( blackberries) and even small willows which grow wild everywhere on the shoot. The game crop in these pictures was just over knee high. It includes millet, sunflower, maize, cornflowers, facelia and some others unknown to me. We wanted to make a path through it so that the pheasants would have a dry space to wander in and to provide access for the feeding quad. I have videos as well and will post them when I figure it out!