A not-so-fine end to the day

[mountainman]

Yesterday afternoon I was tooling around on my Max II and saw that a neighbor's gate was open. I drove up to his camp to find him putting beer in the fridge. My beer! Another neighbor brought it up as compensation for fixing his computer. My neighbor and I celebrated our good fortune for awhile. I decided to go home via our ATV trail network in the woods. I was just about to drive into the garage when CRUNCH! I got out to see what happened:



The axle snapped! After I moved the wheel out of the way I was able to drive the vehicle into the garage. I'm going to have to take the engine out to fix it.

[Mike]

That sucks but at least it happened so close to home. Plus, the engine will come out quicker than you would think and before you know it, you will be back in action again.

[LarryW]

That does ruin a good day. Good thing you noticed. I have gotten home before and get out and then see I am missing a wheel. I had to go back and find it, lol. Sucks you have to pull the motor out to fix it.

Looks like you have a nice little spot out in the middle of nowhere. Going by the picture I mean.

[coosaridgerider]

I know that felling too well.It usually happens out in the middle of no where with no one around.

[mountainman]

Here's a picture of the break. I haven't opened up the body yet but by the wear pattern it looks like the break happened inside the chain gear. The bearing is OK but I don't know if it can be remounted in the through-the-body housing.

I had to replace the engine in my previous Max II. (Had an oil leak and ran out. Oops.) It's a tedious process but not very difficult.

I joke that my address is "Log Cabin in the Woods, End of the Road, Small Town, Vermont. My neighbors and I keep a network of trails, some of them quite old, on our combined 100+ acres of hilly woodland.

My neighbors and their kids were driving their ATVs up and down the road and on the trail network yesterday. Must be nice.

[amphibious drew]

Mountainman,
Your axle break is really no big deal. I was replacing rear axles on my attex every couple of hours of use until I modded the set up. It was down to a 20 minute job including finding all the right tools in my unorganized garage. I would call RI on monday and get that axle on order ASAP. You should be able to be up and going again the day it shows up. If your are worried about pressing the bearing on and off, just get a new one of those too. Its only a couple of bucks anyway and well worth not being aggravated over it.

[CBass]

That picture is both awsome and scary. I'm sure your Max II is newer than mine so it scary to see a splined axle snap like that. I sure hope that was a fluke.

[skarven]

I just bought a MAX II 2006 with a 14hp BS. The axles are without the splines and probably hollow. One of them was welded! it had broken midway between the outer bearing and the wheel flange. A 2 inch piece of pipe with a wall thickness of about a 1/4 inch was used for the weld. I have used it very little, but the weld looked old.

[mountainman]

I was able to work on my poor MAX this weekend. In order to get at the broken axle I had to take the engine out. In order to take the engine out I had to take out a whole lot of other stuff first, including the bracket that holds up the upper body. I tied the upper body to a beam of my little garage as the first picture shows.

As I suspected, the axle broke right at the outside junction of the chain gear. The chain gear and the interior bearing seem to be OK. If I had the proper tools I could get away with buying just a new exterior bearing and a new axle. I may end up buying a complete hub:bearing:axle:gear:bearing assembly and skip the hundreds of hours of (possibly fruitless) labor trying to disassemble and reassemble the old parts.