 Let me show you what this bad boy can do. Hey, welcome back to Titanium Man Garage. And today we're going to be working on a 2002 Sportsman 500 HO, nice looking camouflage one. I'm going to show you what I got going on because a lot of people are asking me questions on this. So when I go to start this thing, in the overflow tank here, it starts to bubble and cool and spits out. And I did notice I'm getting a little vapor out of the tailpipe. It's not white smoke. It's just a kind of a vapor-y, wet-ish kind of look to it. Back story on this is the guy ended up re-boiling the thing and put a new head gasket in everything and he complained about overheating issues. So my guess is he never checked to see if the head was warped or not. Probably put a flimsy gasket in. And it's probably pushing compression back into the coolant lines and that's what's causing it to bubble in that tank. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to tear this head off, take it all apart and check to see how level that head is. That's going to tell me everything right there. I'm about 100% sure that's the issue. There would only be one other issue, it would be the thermostat, it might be blocked off. And I checked that already and oddly enough the thermostat was messed up. The spring was really messed up when I pulled the thermostat out so it wasn't opening and closing properly. At first I thought that was the issue, if at all, easy fix, wrong. So yep, I got a little coolant coming out of the exhaust and bubbles coming out of the, I call it the puke tank, out of the puke tank and we're going to see what's going on. So another thing I'm going to check here, another telltale sign is I'm going to pull a spark plug, I got it loose already. And I want to see if that spark plug is wet, if it's wet, it's telling me coolant's getting in there. Ha, that's actually a first, I don't think you can see that in the camera. It's dry, it needs a new plug, so that tells me that the gasket is somewhat working but for some reason it's blowing back into the coolant lines. So I'm still going to check that head, make sure it's not warped and go from there. Okay guys, I hate to burst your bubble on this one but I already put out three videos on how to replace a head. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to add a link and you can see how I did it. If you look at some of my videos about the Polaris Ranger and a 99 Sportsman I did, I pulled the head off and yeah, I could videotape that but it'll be another three hours long and I don't want to make this video too long. Alright guys, so here's where I'm at. I like to remove as much as possible to get the head off so I took the shift linkages off, comes off of the 10mm, pulled the exhaust pipe off, took the springs off, it has a little bit of a pain. I took the eight bolts off the cover, rocker cover and I looked at the cam, the cam actually looks really good. I pulled the carbon air box off so it's all ready to go. I've got maybe 20 minutes into this. I also did pull the water pump cover off. I want to make sure that that's spun when I pulled the rope and it does and I just moved it now but I did put the engine at top dead center. You want the engine at top dead center before you pull the head off. So I'm actually going to put that back. So the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to pull the tensioner off. This is your timing chain tensioner. I'll pull this cover off, I'll get the chain off, unbolt that and I also have my, as you can see, my coolant lines disconnected and drained. So hopefully it won't be so messy when I pull it apart. And then you got these 14mm bolts that come off, you can just use a 12.14mm socket to get all four of these off. I know I've got a bad view here but it's one here, one here, one here, one here. Once you get everything disconnected, that's a slider right off. What I'm seeing is I see a flimsy little gasket here. So I hate to knock products here but my guess is it's a niche piston and gasket, not knocking niche but the gasket they put in with the kit is really flimsy. My guess is the gasket didn't hold up. It's holding up enough to where there isn't coolant going into the piston but it's blowing back into the coolant causing the bubbles in the overflow tank. So I'm going to pull that off, inspect it, make sure the head is flat, put a Polaris brand gasket in. Guys, they're only like 49 bucks if you go on eBay. Spend the money, do it right. So I'll keep going. Alright guys, so I got everything to assemble like I said, tensioner's gone, cover's gone. I took the three 10mm bolts out of the cam gear. I've got my little cheater hook, I got the chain hung up. There's two 10mm bolts here. Yeah, you want to see something funny. I went to go loosen the head bolts and this one's loose already. I can turn it by hand. So that's why it was leaking. So I'm going to pull all these four bolts off, like I said it's a 14mm with a 12 point. I'm going to buzz them off, check that gasket and I'm going to replace it with a good Polaris gasket but there's my problem, loose head bolts. So whoever did this didn't do the torque specs correctly for Polaris. You get a manual that says everything in there. I can kind of rattle it off but I don't even remember it by hand. I think it started off with 22 foot-pounds, then up to 52 then you back it off two turns, then you torque it to 11 foot-pounds, then it's a quarter turn on each bolt, another quarter turn on each bolt. So you're driving it in, you're backing it off. The reason behind that is the bolts do stretch so you want to make sure they're in tights. I used to work at an engine plant. We did the same thing with brand new engines. So I'm going to pull this head off and show you what I got. Okay guys, got her pulled and yeah, pretty much called that one. Look at this cheap piece of crap, that's garbage. Why would you put that in your machine? There's only three thin layers, actually four thin layers. Let me show you a good Polaris gasket. This is a good Polaris gasket, it's nice and thick, there's actually a thick layer of metal in there. It doesn't bend, I'm flexing on it. I mean, if I really put pressure it would bend but it's nice and solid, it's got a sealing edge on there, what does that have? Head junk, kiss that goodbye. I'm going to check the surface of the head. I'm guessing, I'm hoping that's actually pretty smooth and I won't have to worry about it. Actually it looks like the guy did some refinishing on it, I can see some scratch marks, I might clean that up a little nicer. I'll get rid of the scratch marks, finish it off with 600 grit, put this head gasket back in, tighten the head down to the proper torque sequences and call it a day, that should be it. So like I was saying before, if you buy a piston kit online, like I said, I wasn't really knocking the piston but the gaskets that come with it, the head gasket, they're usually junk. You can go ahead and buy the whole kit if you want, but just go out and buy yourself a Polaris head gasket, a good one, as long as this is what's going to happen. Another thing I wanted to show you, you can see right here on the edge, this is all sealing tight, so there wasn't any coolant getting into the piston, that's why the spark plug was dry, but you can see the outering, these are the coolant parts, you can tell something was getting in there. So I'm guessing it was probably sealing enough for the coolant to get in, but with the compression stroke, it was probably blowing back into the cooling ports as you can see, and that's what was causing the blow back and the bubbles in the overflow tank and in the radiator. I actually had the radiator cap off and hit the throttle and it just shot right up the radiator. So yeah, I was building up pressure in the cooling system and you can see that's the reason why. You can kind of see, I don't know if you can see it in here, but there are some scratch marks. My camera is not focusing for some reason, so I apologize for that. So I'm going to go ahead and clean this up, make a right, put it back together. So one last thing I'm going to do, only because I guided and torqued that down, I don't trust those torque specs when you were building this engine, is there are four 12mm bolts in here, or really got a 12mm head. I'm going to go ahead and torque them down to 49 foot-pounds, that's where they belong. Just kind of double check his work and I'm going to put it back together. Alright guys, I'm going to try to show you this. This is an easy to do with a camera, but I'll take the head and I'll go in a crisscross pattern with a straight edge and look up into the light, and I hope you can see that, but there's light in between there. Same with here, and this side actually rocks back and forth a little bit. So you want to do it right, you take it into a machine shop, have that head machine smooth. It's not that far off, I'm going to take a little 320, sand it out and finish her off with some 600 grit, done it about 20 times, I've never had an issue with it. I'm going to clean that up, put her back together, but so you guys know what to look for. I mean, there you go, crisscross, there is light underneath there. So, and there's that. Alright, so I'm using a little PB Blaster as cutting oil. I got my 320 grit. As you can see, I already started sanding, you can see the high and low spots here. So I'm going to keep going, I'm going to crisscross pattern this way first, flip it, this way. We got to take off a lot of material, go really fast back and forth. I don't think I'm going to have to take much off. Now when I finish it off, I try to give it a little spin, so if any marks, any sanding marks you get are in a circular pattern, and it'll help from any leaks. That's cleaning up pretty nice. And I'll finish that off with 600 grit, wet dry sandpaper. That's looking pretty good. Got most of the little spots down. There's a little oxidation here. I took the straight edge and I went cross both ways. I'm not seeing any light, which is a good sign. All right, just to let you guys know, I did surface that piece on something flat. Piece of glass works really well. I have a flat piece of large tile, so I got it nice and smooth. I got the thicker head gasket in. I'm at the point of the timing chain now, so I had that on a hook. I used to just go ahead and try to hook it back up and try to get the line up, but you never know where you are with the flywheel in line with the gear. So what I learned over the years, it's a lot easier to pull a flywheel off, and that's actually really nice and clean. I know the lighting sucks over here, but I'm going to go ahead and pull that off, pull the stator off, and line up the timing marks with the crank, and there's a silver link on the chain that'll go down here, and there'll be two silver links that line up with the two indents on the cam gear. That way I know my timing is dead on. I don't have anything to worry about. Not that I throw that cam gear in with a chain like that, I'm guessing. I'm guessing where exactly the right point is at the top of the center. I don't want to guess, so I want this right. So that's the way I'm going to do it, and I suggest you guys do the same thing. Just takes a little guesswork out, not that you get this all back together, and you're like, why is a run like crap? Is the timing off? Is there something wrong with the carb? That way you know your timing's on, and you're good to go. So yeah, I got the bolt, or I got the nut pull off of here, puller, pull that bad boy off, pull the stator off to check my timing marks, line up the chain, put the cam in, the cam gear in, and we'll get the valves adjusted, make sure the valve lash is correct. I do have videos on how to rebuild an engine. I didn't want to make this video long, going step by step. I still got to do my torque sequence up here for all four bolts. I just got them snugged up right now. What I like to do is I like to get it on there, put the motor mount on, so this whole thing doesn't twist, and go through my torque sequence, and then line everything up, put the tensioner back in, check my valve lash should be 0.006, and yeah, that's kind of it. Once you get used to doing this, it's actually not that bad. I'm going on three hours. I did take a little break for lunch, so maybe two hours, and we'll see how this thing turns out. All right guys, so this is what I mean by guessing. See the chains all hung on there. There's two silver links down here. They should be at the top. So if I were to put this all back together, I wouldn't know for a fact where my timing marks are. So I'm going to go ahead. You got little lighting sucks in here. There's two dimples on top of here that'll line up with the two silver links. So I'm going to rotate this whole chain, everything line up where it's supposed to be, and we are close. Turn a little bit, and I want to line everything up so it's in the right position. Part can be a little bit of a trick. There's my one silver link at the bottom. I'm going to line that up with the timing mark on the gear, the crank gear. Let's straight up. Put what's supposed to be, and up here, there's two silver links. I grab my cam gear, put that in place, and push this back to the tooth. Normally I do this on the other side of the shop where the lighting's a little better. Bolt in here just so it stays in place. Another good part about a stator off is I can kind of check the oil too. I'm sure I probably got some coolant in the oil. I love here, but... So you got two silver links with the two little indents up here, and then down at the bottom, there's a silver link, and that lines up with the timing mark. Now I know my timing's perfect at top dead center, so when I put the... When I torque everything down, and then I set the valve lash, I know I'm right where I need to be. I'm going to head and put those cam bolts back in, torque my head down. Now you notice I didn't torque the head down first. I did that for a reason just in case I had to move this out of the way. I have to take the head back off. So I like to get the timing chain in place before I torque everything down. That's just me. I don't know if there's a right or wrong way to do it, but I just found it's easier for me to do it that way. All right, fast forward two hours later. I did have to torque the jug bolts down because the guy didn't have that torque correctly. Got everything all back together. Did the torquing sequence for the head. Got everything all put back together nice. Go to fire it up and kind of ran funny. So ended up taking the car apart. I found some dirt in the jet. Got her all back together. And let me show you what this bad boy can do. Puketank isn't gurgling anymore. Guys, if you got a little back pressure in your cooling system, maybe it's backfiring a little bit. You got some funky going on. Check that flimsy head gasket. See if somebody put one in there or maybe the head's warped. Who knows? Sometimes you buy something you never know what you're going to get. I thought I got a good deal with the guy rebuilding the engine and turned out to be a little bit of a nightmare. So I got probably a total of six hours into this. And I did have to adjust the throttle cable after I put the car back on. Other than that, yes, it runs good. All right, so I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Hit the thumbs up if you liked it. Subscribe if you haven't. I got plenty of Polaris repairs on my channel. And like always, till next time.