another shaft failure

Flygti32 · Nov 19, 2012

I'd put this in the other thread but havent been able to read past page 3 because of my member status, anyway! I saw this at work today when i was over at the motorsports building talking to the mechanics. It came in this morning already out of the sled so no production date for you guys yet on the machine. After having the thing in my hands I have a couple things to say about it. 1) If this thing is supposed to be bonded, you guys tell me from the pics, how much bonding agent do you see ?? because to me that is sweet F all. 2) What bonding material was there, i picked at it some with my ofla knife and was able to cut through the material like cutting through an eraser. This stuff was definately not cured. The other question i asked myself was how much of this bonding agent is actually "between" the 2 parts once you shove them together? i would think the parts fit quite tight with very little tolerance before you would add the glue to them. My assumption would be the glue gets scraped or pushed towards inside of the shaft? Unless there building the two parts with a fair degree of "slop" between them and the dead space is supposed to be filled with bonding agent. I dunno anyway here are pics of the shaft i saw today.

Sage Crusher · Nov 19, 2012

Yikes!
And that is supposed to be the same bonding holding the bulkhead together :jaw:

S/C

Jonce · Nov 19, 2012

That thing didn't even have a chance. Been a sledder all my life, hate to see issues like this with any mfg. Keep us posted on any info.

AKSNOWRIDER · Nov 19, 2012

it is assembled, then the glue is injected thru the 2 holes in the tube...definitly a glue failure, once the glue failed the tube split at the corners and folded back allowing the tube to fall off the hub..

BGYDOP1 · Nov 19, 2012

Bummer

Bummer, looks like casting from China

Reg2view · Nov 19, 2012

You just can't look at those pics and not have a 'WTF were they thinking' moment.

mountainhorse · Nov 19, 2012

Sage Crusher said:
Yikes!
And that is supposed to be the same bonding holding the bulkhead together

Ya know... now that I think of it.. no one has confirmed that this stuff is ACTUALLY the Lord-406 adhesive...

If your adhesive was soft...cured 406 is hard... bears credence to the point there may have been a bad batch of these shafts.

Again... In the preseason... with the Demo Fleet with 1,000's of miles on them.. they all had the aluminum bonded shafts... Not a faulty design IMO.

paulharris · Nov 19, 2012

not that it matters but there is a "channel" in the stub end that the adhesive flows through when it is injected thru the holes allowing it to travel 360 degrees around the shaft. I think its a moot point though, this whole driveshaft is a huge fail IMO. Pisses me off, polaris needs to get their sh*t together step up and recall these NOW

AKSNOWRIDER · Nov 19, 2012

mountainhorse said:
Ya know... now that I think of it.. no one has confirmed that this stuff is ACTUALLY the Lord-406 adhesive...

If your adhesive was soft...cured 406 is hard... bears credence to the point there may have been a bad batch of these shafts.

Again... In the preseason... with the Demo Fleet with 1,000's of miles on them.. they all had the aluminum bonded shafts... Not a faulty design IMO.

thats the thing Eric, we dont know what glue it is..I doubt it is 406, maybe a higher series ?..I also wonder if they are baking them afterwards to improve strength? most definetly if the glue is soft it didnt get mixed right for sure...

AKSNOWRIDER · Nov 19, 2012

paulharris said:
not that it matters but there is a "channel" in the stub end that the adhesive flows through when it is injected thru the holes allowing it to travel 360 degrees around the shaft. I think its a moot point though, this whole driveshaft is a huge fail IMO. Pisses me off, polaris needs to get their sh*t together step up and recall these NOW

Actually, the materials they are using look fine strength wise to me..everything looks like it is well speced..this looks more like bad assembly from the point of prep and glue mix..for sure it is an issue, and polaris may need to figure out a non destructive test that every shaft will have to pass before it goes in a sled if they cant isolate this down..but once they figure it out , I imagine most owners will have no more issues with it...

AkLogan · Nov 19, 2012

mountainhorse said:
Again... In the preseason... with the Demo Fleet with 1,000's of miles on them.. they all had the aluminum bonded shafts... Not a faulty design IMO.

Untill some one can prove that these are the exact same shafts this is a useless point to keep bringing up. It has been said many of times that prototypes are hand built sleds. These are obviously not hand built prototypes so how does it even seem remotely fair to compare the two?

Matte Murder · Nov 19, 2012

I HOPE it's a manufacturing problem, not a design problem. The design LOOKS bad but the same design worked very well on the test/demo sleds. There is really no margin of error though for the manufacturer. Any problem with the glue and it's going to fail badly. I have never seen the inside of that shaft. Some kind of interference fit with that internal triangulated piece would have been stronger and had way more surface area for the glue to hold too.

Flygti32 · Nov 19, 2012

AKSNOWRIDER said:
it is assembled, then the glue is injected thru the 2 holes in the tube...definitly a glue failure, once the glue failed the tube split at the corners and folded back allowing the tube to fall off the hub..

Well that makes more sense than my assumption of press fitting the pieces. Id be curious to know where the shafts are being made/ assembled? probably China. :sad:

cb2honk · Nov 19, 2012

Talk about a kick in the nuts!

AKSNOWRIDER · Nov 19, 2012

I doubt china..now mexico is a possibility....

Ski-Dont89 · Nov 19, 2012

snowmobiler · Nov 19, 2012

can we get a new subsection for just failures.

bosssho · Nov 19, 2012

Really not encouraged to see this. Thanks for posting. Hopefully e recall ASAP.

redrockwr · Nov 19, 2012

This topic goes on and on and on.....but what are dealers saying? What is Polaris saying? Are the dealers not talking to the Polaris Reps about this? And what is Polaris stance on this. It has to be on their desk by this point.
These photos were taken at the dealer right? Is Polaris warranting this? What is the dealer saying about the fix, are they charging these guys for the repair.
It seems like all of us are talking about this but no one with a pulse on what is going on is chiming in. It would be great for someone from a dealership or Polaris to let the general public know what is going on, or have they and I just not seen it yet.

Flygti32 · Nov 19, 2012

redrockwr said:
This topic goes on and on and on.....but what are dealers saying? What is Polaris saying? Are the dealers not talking to the Polaris Reps about this? And what is Polaris stance on this. It has to be on their desk by this point.
These photos were taken at the dealer right? Is Polaris warranting this? What is the dealer saying about the fix, are they charging these guys for the repair.
It seems like all of us are talking about this but no one with a pulse on what is going on is chiming in. It would be great for someone from a dealership or Polaris to let the general public know what is going on, or have they and I just not seen it yet.

Yes pics were taken at the dealership. I dont know anymore details as of yet because i havent talked to the service manager about it. It just showed up this morning so maybe in the next day or so ill have more info on what our dealer or Polaris is gonna do about it.

another shaft failure

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