bansheesandrider

I bought 2 Banshees brand new from a dealer and a third one that was new enough to have a stock chain and they all had a master link on them, also my kid's Blaster was bought brand new and had a master link. Most, if not all Yamaha sport quads come with a DID o-ring chain and all of them have a master link that I know of. The chains without master links are usually used on street bikes or are aftermarket.

Not all pistons are stamped on the top, but most of the good name brands are, so try to clean the carbon off and see. If it is not stamped, then you can use a micrometer on the piston and/or a bore guage on the cylinder to determine what size it is.

I would recomend steel. I ran aluminum for years because everybody said that was what I should be running for maximum performance. But the back sprocket would wear out long before the chain or front sprocket would, I would go through a sprocket in less than 1 season. Then I decided to go back to a steel sprocket and I have gone through 2 chain and sprocket sets in about the last 7 years, and everything seems to wear evenly. So, if you are just doing normal riding and some occasional racing, I would go with steel. If it is an all out race bike, I would go with aluminum.

Yes, it looks like a Cascade seat, but they don't advertise in those magazines the last time I looked. Contact the seller on Ebay and find out who made it.

You can use the 2003 harness if all the plugs are the correct type, which I think they are. Just take the harness to the bike and start comparing the connector plugs to what is on the bike, there will be some different ones due to the brakelight, but check the stator, CDI, headlight/run switch, key switch if you have one, to see if they are the same. The rest of the stuff should be the same.

Yes this is illegal, it is a crime to tamper with a VIN and that is what this is. If you bought your Banshee out of a legal pawn shop you should have gotten a title with it because the previous owner should have had to reliquish the title when he pawned it. Otherwise he coould have reported it stolen and had the cops retrieve it from the pawn shop for him, if he had the title the cops would have sided with him and not the pawn shop. Buying a complete frame off of Ebay is a totally different thing, some of them come with titles. The one that don't have a title, usually have a bill of sale and, depending on the state you are in, that can be used to get a legal title. That is what I did here in Oregon. All this being said, I did contemplate cutting the VIN out of my old frame and welding it into my Ebay frame, until I went to DMV and found out the process to get a title and the penalty if I got caught doing the other. Also, you don't need engine cases, because on some years of Banshees the engine case nubers are different from the frame numbers and the cops and DMV go by the frame numbers. Plus, it is perfectly legal to replace a complete engine, they put reman engines in cars all the time that have different numbers on the engine.

A straight paddle is like a knife blade, when the direction of force is lengthwise to the bike, which is against the wide surface of the paddle, it is against a broad surface so it hooks up and propels you forward. When the force is sideways, as in turning, there is no surface area in that direction, so they just slide. The angled paddles compromise some of their straight ahead surface to get some sideways surface to corner better. Of course I have a 4 inch swingarm so there is not as much weight on the ass end so it slides better, however that does not change the thoery, just the degree of execution.From the way you are describing it, you are not really sliding the rear end around, by sliding I mean you are turning the bars to the right to turn to the left and vice versa. If you look on Skat Trak's website you will see it lists Haulers for drag racing and hillclimbing, and the V paddle tire are listed for corner turning.

If the half moon piece on the frame is bent at all, you need to fix it first. Then check to see if the tie rods bind up. Like I said before, on my bike, once I fixed the half moon piece, I was able to trim a little off the stops for a tighter turning radius with no problems with the linkage binding.

Get the wiring diagram for a 2002 or newer, it will show where Yamaha tapped into the harness when they added the brakelight in 2002. I believe that they spliced into the wire that feeds the headlight switch and the voltage regulator, it is the yellow wire coming out of the stator going to the headlight switch and has a blue wire spliced to it going to the voltage regulator.

X2, I had this problem on my bike. My needle and seats loked fine , but the O-ring that seals the seat to the carb was hard and did not fit tight in the carb. I tried replacing the o-ring with a universal one from a o-ring kit because you can not buy just the o-ring from Yamaha or Mikuni. It worked for awhile and then they started leaking again, so I ended up biting the bullet and buying new needles and seats. That fixed it and it has been good for 3 years now.

Fix all of your known problems and carry some spare parts. My Banshee is an 89 model and I have very few problems with at the dunes because I do alot of preventative maintenance between rides. The problems I have had lately have been electrical, so I have been replacing my electrical components. When I work on it I don't do anything half ass, no stripped or missing screws, no reusing marginal parts, new gaskets as needed. There is not much you can do about a crank seal other than making sure it is installed properly when you put it in, make sure the seal lips are lubed and not dry at start up. All you can do about a CDI box is carry a spare and don't use crap like Ricky Stator or some other Taiwan or China crap. As faras stators, voltage regulators, etc are concerned stay with Yamaha and for CDIs go with Yamaha or Dyna, for coils use Yamaha, Dyna, or Nology. Just remember that there is a whole lot more to go wrong on a 4 joke when it gets older than there is on a Banshee.

What kind of frame is it, that it doesn't have a VIN? If some one is custom building it for you, then have them stamp a number on it a make up a certificate of origin. Most of the major frame builders like Lonestar put a VIN on their products.

Wiseco pistons are forged. Forged pistons run a tighter clearance than a cast piston so putting a Wiseco piston in a stock bore is pointless because the piston to cylinder clearance will be to big. Wiseco does make 64mm pistons for the guys that have resleeved and can set their bore up for the proper clearances. Wiseco is the only brand of pistons to use in my opinion. If money is not a problem, then I would recomend porting it for how and where you ride while you are in there.

Other than having bearings and clutches there are not many similarities between a Banshee transmission and an automotive automatic transmission. Most automatics have bushings not bearings, all the planetary gears in an auto are in constant mesh instead of sliding back and forth and having to line up dogs on the gears. Cars also run a cooler on the trans because if ATF goes above 200 degrees, the life span is cut in half and decreases by half again for every 10 degrees above that. A car trans doesn't see the shock loading because the gears are in constant mesh and it is connected to the engine by a fluid coupling, known as a torque convertor. Banshees have gears sliding back and forth, ball bearings and a manual clutch shocking the trans, and the surface area of Banshee gears is much smaller than auto trans. Plus in a auto trans the planetary gears are much better supported becuase they are mounted in a carrier with 2-6 gears in each carrier and all of that is inside a ring gear instead of being 1 pair of gears mounted on opposing shafts. I know alot of guys run ATF and love it, bit it did not work in my bike and I found something else that did and I have been very happy with it, I have had zero failures with it , my clutch has been in the bike since 1995 and still looked new the last time I was in there to inspect it, and I think the Klotz is worth it for my peace of mind. Back in the 90s I used to ride with JD Racing's employees and they all swore by ATF, but they were continuosly having tranny problems and I was still out riding.

Are they actually wore or is the half moon piece of metal on the frame bent forward? That is a common problem on older bikes. The fix is to beat the half moon piece of metal on the frame right above and in front of the lower steering stem bearing back into position, it should be parallel with the steering stem, and then gusset it so it can't bend forward again. If the ends of it are wore down and causing this then you will need to build them up with a welder and grind them flat. If it is the stem that is wore, I would replace the stem as that piece is cast and harder to weld. Once I had the frame stop back in place on my bike I was able to trim about 1/16 inch off each end with no problems with the tie rods locking up, this gave me a slightly tighter turning radius for tree shots.

No, it was not clutch material, it was metal. You could get it out of the oil with a magnet. I even split the cases and could not determine where it came from, but the clutch was perfect. ATF is perfect for cars because an automatic does not see as heavy of shock loads because it has a torque convertor instead of a clutch and cars have a cooler to keep the fluid cool so it doesn't break down from the heat. I was an industrial transmission rebuilder for 15 years and saw many different types of oil used in them and from what I saw ATF is not the best oil for a transmission that has lots of metal parts moving back and forth and having to mesh together(shift forks and sliding gears that have dogs that have to mesh), it is an OK oil for a transmission that uses clutch packs to apply diferent gear ratios. As for something being wrong causing it not to shift, I drained the ATF, flushed the tranny and went to BelRay Gearsaver and it shifted much better. I ran that for awhile( a couple of changes) and then my dealer was out, so I tried the Honda gear lube, that flat sucked as far as shifting. I drained it and flushed the tranny and started running the Klotz Flex Drive 30 and have had smooth shifting ever since. Not once during all of these different oils did I open it up or adjust anything except while I was running ATF. Based on the expierences I have had, I think ATF sucks in a Banshee and my setup works very well with the Klotz and I have never had a problem with my transmission or clutch running it, no bearing or gear failures and my clutch has been in it since about 1995 and still looks brand new.

A kickback is what usually cracks the cover. Having you heelguard removed won't cuase o problem because Banshees older than 91 never had them in the first place and when they did add them, they added extra metal on the footpeg mounting plate for a stop so the kicker wouldn't go down and get stuck on the heelguard.

Most of the guys on here recomend ATF and change it often because it is cheap. I feel ATF doesn't provide adequate protection for your gears and bearings because when I drained it out there were metallic particles in it, and my bike did not shift worth a damn when I tried it. I recomend Klotz Flex Drive 30, part number KL506, RMATV sells it. With the Klotz, my bike shifts great and I have had no problems with gears, bearings, shift forks or clutch balls welding themselves to the pushrod, even in my wife's Banshee and there is no metal in it when I drain it. The last time I split my cases there was no wear in the tranny and my bike is now 20 years old with the original gears. The Klotz oil is expensive, but so are gears and I have not had to replace any. As for premix oil I would use Klotz R50, I used to run yamalube, but I had problems with spark plugs fouling and eventually I had a crankshaft fail with it. Bansh-eman and I had a heated discussion about this, but I don't like Yamalube. After I replaced the crank, I switch to Klotz Benol and really liked it in my bike, however my wife did not ride hard enough to burn it properly and we had problems with carbon buildup in the ring lands in the piston and the rings sticking. So I then switched to the Klotz R50 and have had no problems with it, no lost motors, the top ends last a long time, no fouled plugs or stuck rings. I have been running R50 for about 16 or 17 years I think, mixing it at 40:1, that is 1 pint of oil to 5 gallons of gas. As for antifreeze, I use regular Prestone mixed 50/50 with a little Redline WaterWetter added for good measure.

FMF has jetting info on their website, however it is for stock bikes with their pipes at sea level. However, with your elevation and other mods, they probably offset each other and the FMF chart would be a good place to start and then do some plug chops to adjust from there. I would also recomend reading the jetting technical info.

As far as the Off/Run switch, it might just be a bad ground. Take the switch apart and clean the contacts inside of it and make sure the metal tang that sticks out has good contact with bare metal on the handlebars by twisting the switch slightly as you tighten the screws that hols it to the bars. As far as the transmission oil, yes I would drain what is in it, but no I wouldn't put ATF in it. I would recomend a goos motorcycle tranny oil such as Klotz Flex Drive 30, part number KL506. When I ran ATF and also several other oils in my gearbox, I had problems with it being hard to shift and also fine metallic particle in the oil when I drained it. Guys on here like the ATF because it is cheap and they say to change it more often, but that still doen't provide the protection for your gears and bearings. The last time I split my cases, the gears showed zero wear and I have never lost any bearings or had a clutch ball weld itself to the pushrod, not even on the wife's Banshee. All K&N filters should have an Outerwear on them, as long as your airbox has the ProFlow adapter in it, you don't need the lid unless you are swamp riding. The ProFlow adapter is an aluminum plate that bolts into the airbox for the filter to clamp to, without it you need the lid on the box because the lid is what holds the filter in place when you don't have the adapter. Stock shifters are fine, I run one on my bike, but they have been known to break the weld where the arm is attached to the clamp section. This can be prevented be rewelding it and as you finish your bead, run the beat part way up the valley on the back side of the arm. This prevents it from getting brittle as it cools and then it won't crack.

All Banshees and most other Yamaha sport quads use a 4 on 156 bolt pattern on the front, 87-88 and 91 on Banshees use a 4 on 115 pattern on the rear like most other Yamaha sport quads except the Blaster. 89-90 Banshees use a 4 on 156 pattern on the rear and that is the only time Yamaha used that pattern on the back of a sport quad. Blasters use a 4 on 100 or 4 on 110 patttern, I am not sure which it is. The rear hubs on Blasters, Banshees, Warriors, and I believe Raptors are all the same splines and can be swapped around. I run the 4 on 156 pattern on my wife's 97 Banshee and my kids Blaster so I only have to carry 1 set of spare tires to the dunes, I have more wheels in that pattern because my Banshee is an 89.

Why? Just install HeliCoils in your cylinders, they will then be better than original and it will only cost less than 50 bucks if you use genuine Heli Coils, and if you use another brand it will be even less.

Both the FMF Fattys that were on my wife's old Banshee and the FMF Fatty that is on my kids Blaster were nickel plated, definitely no chrome.

Blasters are great bike for what they are, my wife's first quad was one and now my kid rides on. When we had my wife's Blaster we had a PT hi rev pipe on it, a cut head, a K&N filter and a +2 in. swingarm. Her father had a bone stock Banshee at the same time and would much rather ride her Blaster than his Banshee, it was just much funner to throw around and do shit on. Don't get me wrong, my Banshee was the preferred ride, but her modded Blaster was more fun and in some places more capable(probably because of the lighter weight), than his stock Banshee.

Yes you wil have to get bigger pistons, I would recomend letting whoever does your boring supply the Wiseco pistons, that way if he has to go up more than 1 size to get it cleaned up, you are not stuck with a set of pistons that don't fit. Stock bore size is 64 mm, but is that where you are at? You bought the bike used and don't know all of the history. The reason the other guy might not have bored it could be because it is maxed out on bores and you will have to either sleeve it or get different cylinders, I am not saying that is the way it is, but it is a possibility. I strongly recomend Wiseco pistons, but make sure your machinist is familiar with them and knows how to measure them and bore for the correct clearances.