How to Service Your ATV/UTV

Publisher's Note: Welcome to our twelfth edition of Tech Tips Tuesday on "How to Service Your ATV/UTV".  We'll be re-publishing an edition of AMSOIL Tech Tips for you every Tuesday.  Click on the Blog Category "Tuesday Tech Tips" to see everything published to-date.

John Gardner: "Where we're going, we don't need roads."

Welcome to this AMSOIL Tech Tip. We're talking about ATV and UTV service, and man, they live in a harsh environment. So, let's start out with a little checklist here. You know, if you're going to ride one of these things, this is kind of a basic list: check your oil, your air filter, chain, all the levers to make sure you're safe before you go out there and ride it.

Now, a little more detailed list over here, you can see I get down here to engine oil and then I get down here to the final gear and differential, a couple of different components on this bike. We're going to stick with oil on this one, and you can see right here we shot this thing with an infrared camera; it's about 280 degrees. They get hot, and there's not a lot of oil in there.

Len, you guys actually shot some footage as well, walk us through this.

Len Groom: We did. We had this on the dyno, and we were doing a bunch of test work with it. You can see here the case is about 100 plus degrees, but as we slide over and we jump on that oil, you see it get up to 180, which is, you know, normal to slightly elevated for this type of a machine since it's liquid-cooled.

John Gardner: Yeah, it's not the worst thing in the world, but they live in a harsh environment. How's AMSOIL going to help us out there?

Len Groom: Well, the thing that we've seen is common now with the OEMs is you're building these wide spreads on the viscosities. You're seeing 5W-50s, you're seeing 0W-50s, which we've just launched. And what you have to do there is, you've got to be very careful when you're building that oil that you're using very high-quality parts, if you will, because it has to move in very cold temperatures but then it still has to protect in very hot temperatures. So it's the best of both worlds. You have to make sure that you're doing what you need to do to get a good quality piece, which we've done.

John Gardner: And I just kind of, you know, I've never seen 0W-50. That's absolutely a wide spread of oil. I live down in Florida. I mean, there's different requirements for it than you up there in Minnesota; it's freezing up there, and they ride them all year long.

Len Groom: That's correct. That product, in particular, would hold up very well in the Florida heat, no issues at all because we put it together right based on all the testing that we've done and all the research.