[sailorman3]

I thought I had a toe in problem but I think it may be something else. My problem is that my Grizzly wants to wander to the left when the steering is straight. When you look at the front of the bike when the steering is straight, it looks like the left wheel is not straight but turned out a bit. The right one is straight. Can this be easily fixed or is something bent and going to give me serious problems. Any help would be great thanks.

 

[xtremegrizz]

Sounds like you better take the wheel off and take a good look at your tie rod and make sure its not bent and that everything else is ok. Then make sure nothing came loose.

 

[shull]

You'll need to jack your front up to get the tires off the ground. With the steering straight make a chalk mark on the center of the tread of both tires. spinn the wheels so that both marks are 90 deg. from bottom facing front. Mesure the distance between the marks and record. Then spinn the wheels 180 deg so that the marks are facing the rear mesure again. The difference between the two mesurements are your toe. I believe the spec is less than 1/4 inch. Any adjustments made should be done as to keep the tie rods equal in length.

This is from memory after reading the manual last weekend on this very suject.I'm hoping my memory serves us well... I would do as Xtremegrizz sugest first.

Hope this helps, good luck

Scott

 

[calaski]

Sounds like the tie rod. I bent mine out on the trail this summer, used the winch to pull it straight.. had to stop and straighten it a bunch of times to get home. Picked one up online and away we go....

Jim

 

[dknarnd]

Before you go adjusting both tie rods you want to make sure one isn't bent like Xtremegrizz mentioned.

If nothing is bent then you can adjust your tierods and to do the adjustment lift the machine up to take the weight off of the tires. Before you measure or check in another fashion set the machine down and bounce on the front a couple of times and roll it forward and back. If you don't do this your measurements may be off because the suspension has not compressed, or settled into its normal position. Remember to have you air pressure correct before measuring and adjusting and make sure your handle bars are pointing correctly.

Before adjusting both tierods determine if the front is in line with the rear. To do this I either use a long straight edge placed along the back tire and across the front or an easier method is to use string. Anchor it behind the machine and pull it tight along the back wheel to the front and you will be able to measure and see which way the tires is pointing.

 

[dreamweaver69]

I bent one at Marengo Swamp last year when a tree jumped out in front of me. had the same problem. check them both on a flat surface.

 

[bigmac]

Did we hit the same tree? I bent the left front tie rod also at Marengo Swamp ride last year. That dame tree. I"m going to cut it down this year.

 

[starky]

Also, make sure your tire preasures are equal then measure the circumferance of your tires. I use a piece of string. Sometimes even if your tire preasure is the same in both tires one will be bigger around than the other. This will cause you to drift to the side of the smaller tire.

 

[dreamweaver69]

the tree I hit was around the 5 mile mark just before the suicide hole. hope to see you there this year, closer to time I'm going to try to set a place some of us can meet up out there and put a face with the name.

 

[94]

I guess the first question is did you hit something hard to make you think something is bent? Next thing is if you look at the front of most atv's especially Hondas you will see that the front wheels are not straight in line with eachother, honda had a speck of plus or minus an inch and a half if I remember right. When you check the toe in and it comes back as in speck look at the tires with the handlebars in the center position and see if they appear straight or one is looking off to the side some. Remember when you check it with the front off the ground as weight is applied the normal tendency is for the front of the wheels/tires to spread due to the tie rods being behind the center axis of the wheels, compress the front even more and they will spread more, nature of the beast, you can really see this happen on a snowmobile as the skis are longer and it will show better. I found mine to drift to the left on a level road but on a crowned road the crown will affect the way the machine will drift, I found my tie rods to be at differnt lenths when I looked at them. There was a thread on this site where the poster actually set his toe in with the machine on the ground, not in the air, I followed his post and found that my front end feels lighter/steering response isnt as heavy, and the machine tracks straight. Before I did this if I was riding on a snow covered road and hit a bare spot my machine would pull hard that way until it went back to both tires on the snow covered road again. Since I adjusted them no more pull to the bare pavement side it tracks nice and straight. You need a little toe out, if you adjust them to much and they are toed in the machine will dart from side to side, hunting for grip, this is the same as on a snowmobile they needed a slight toe out, toe in and they would dart all over the trail. Just my $.02

 

[irv]

Uhh Guy's, in case you haven't noticed this post is over a year old and the original poster hasn't been on here since June of last year. Just thought I would let you know.......Irv

 

[robg]

The tie rods are pretty weak, but it's better to bend those than something harder and more costly to replace. I've gotten to where I keep at least one or two extra sets of tie rods on hand at all times, as I tend to change mine out at least once or twice a year.

Setting the toe is a bit of a pain, but it's actually easier (IMO) to avoid the fancy measuring and just eyeball it, ride it a bit on flat ground, particularly pavement, and then make adjustments until it steers the way you want. It'll take probably an hour of dinking with it, but it's well worth it.

Rob