Basic ATV Maintenance Schedule
June 25th, 2010 | 
Author: One of the easiest ways to keep your all terrain vehicles running well is to keep it on a regular maintenance schedule. While there may be some indication of how much time should pass between doing various jobs in the ATV repair manuals , it is very important to set up a repair and maintenance schedule for your ATVs. Not just so that you remember to set aside the time, but also so that you make sure to get done all of the odd jobs that only need to happen once a month or so. This may have to be adjusted based on how much time you spend on the vehicle and how hard you are riding it. Playing out in the woods is a very different ride from training for a tournament and you will want to vary your schedule based on these things.
When there are three sets of things that you need to do. The first one is the list of things that you will need to do as soon as you get the bike. You will end up checking them again later, but this is important because you can’t assume that you have got a perfect bike. If anything is ignored it could easily cause some major damage later on. The main areas you want to check on are the engine , oil, transmission and filter. You want to make sure that nothing is generally wrong with the engine. There should be no extra metal coming out of it. After that you just want to check the controls and the general running of the vehicle. If anything is out of line find your service manual which should have the solution to fix it.
The rest of the schedule should be easy. Unless it is otherwise stated, or unless you leave it in storage for more than a month, there are a few monthly and yearly things that aught to be checked on. Throttle, spark plugs, break system, brake shoes, carburetor idle, drive chain, nuts and bolts all need to be checked each month. Some of them will be worn out others won’t. Use your own judgment to decide when they are worn enough to change although remember that if you plan on letting them sit for another month they may wear out before then. Other things such as the wheels, fuel line, suspension system and steering system will only need to be checked yearly and then again every six months if they do not need any maintenance.
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These sound like common sense, but so many people overlook regular maintenance, unless they’re mechanically-inclined. I remember being stranded with some of my buddies in the middle of the woods for half a day because they forgot to give their ATVs a thorough check and ALL of them broke down at once. (I was along for the ride, the machines belonged to them, not me.) We had to wait while two of them walked all the way back to camp and figured out the best route to get a truck up to where we were waiting.