I've got an 06 Sportstman 500 HO. Starting to do some boat repair's and my driveway is small and yard is going to be getting soft soon.
I need something to move boats around...thinking of using the sportsman. My new quad cab truck is just to big to maneveur around the yard.
I have a receiver on the back, but also thought about building something for the front. It would be much easier to maneuver with the boat in the front plus you're not constantly looking behind. Been kicking around the idea of buying a snow plow kit and modifing it or building an attachment for the frame.
Wondering how much weight I can put on this wheeler before it breaks. My manual say something like 1200 pounds trailer weight and 125 pounds tongue weight.
I think 125 pounds tounge weight is total BS and a "safe figure" to avoid warranty claims. Think about it....it's saying it won't even hold the weight of a grown man?
Do yall think it will hold up moving boats around? Think ski boats...with I/O's. probably nothing over 19 foot.
i had a 25gal sprayer on the back of my old 2000 and my new 2008 sportsman. i could almost do a wheelie. figured out its about 250lbs + 150lb rider for myself. the more weight you put on it the more the front end is gona get light and will take more area to turn and back. as for the front end. i would put to much weight on it. id say maybe 200ish pounds. i think the tounge weight is pretty close on the rear. as the 1 1/4" reciver isent made for large loads. someone was useing a reciver mounted disk and started to bend it. if you really want to put weight on it. they do make 2inch reciver bolt on hitches. altho its still a wheeler and not a pickup.
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2008 polaris sportsman 500ho carb(cash paid)
home made 54" snow plow, 3000lb warn winch, winch grill cut out "cut by me", 8 911ep led warning lights & ls12, LED taillights & work lights, front bumper, K&N air filter, P-X-T tires & alum rims(summer), 489 & steel rims(winter), hand/thumb warmers, RotopaX fuel packs, 4x8 trailer w/LED tail & maker lights, custom made lock & ride fimco boom sprayer, lock & ride tall windshield. got my auto reverse lights made and installed.
not exactly what I wanted to hear but what I kind of expected. My neighbor talks like I could hook any boat I want to on to the thing but it just doesn't look engineered tough enough for any real weight.
I could build a heavy duty front tow hitch into the frame. I'm not worried about a custom built hitch or where the hitch mounts to it but more if the axles on the machine would take it. If the weight is on the front tires turning should not be a problem. If it would reverse wheelie I could stack a couple hundred pounds on the back...but maybe I should just scrap the idea unless the boat is lightweight.
That is exactly what one of our local boat shops has done. They are running a sportsman 500. and reinforced the front brush guard, mounted a ball out in frront of it, and move boats around with it. On the other hand, the bigger boats are moved with a ball welded to one of the forks on a fork lift, and moved around with a fork lift. I would imagine that the tounge weight is going to be your factor. How low an how far out in front of the 4x4 you mount the ball is going to add to the tounge weight. setting it right ontop of the front axles would probably be the best bet. less tounge weight, etc. Try setting the front of the trailer ontop of your front rack, and see how much it squats.
You could try what a buddy of mine did for moving his very large, heavy ice fishing house with a Honda 300 4x4, he built a "dolly",simply an axle with 2 tires on it,with a steel plate welded to the top with a ball hitch on it, the tongue weight would rest on the dolly ,and a short tongue connected the dolly to the quad, that way he had minimum weight on the hitch of the 300, and was able to move around larger loads than would be possible hooked up directly to his axle mounted hitch.
I had the same situation, wanted to shuffle trailers around with a front hitch, but didn't want to hang a heavy tongue weight on the Polaris. So instead, I built a 2" bolt-on ball mount for the front of my Scag Turf Tiger 61" zero-turn mower, which has a hell-for-stout front end. Works like a charm. Talk about maneuvering ease, I can squeeze a trailer into any spot I want with that thing, first try. Hitching up is a piece of cake, too, with the ball sitting right in front of me, and I no longer get a crick in my neck backing various trailers around. Besides, to me, slowly and accurately backing an ATV is a major pain.
For the Polaris, I built a little 6" drop hitch for the rear 1-1/4" sleeve on my X2 for yard carts, sprayers, and such, but I'd be really careful of putting much weight or strain on that wimpy little Polaris 1-1/4" receiver sleeve, which is a MUCH lighter gauge tubing than it should have been. Everything else on this X2 seems pretty stout, so I don't understand why they put that little girly hitch sleeve in there.
Photos attached, but don't look too close at my weld beads, lol.
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2009 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI X2, Green/black. Front brush guard, Front cargo bars, Warn RT-30 winch, rear bumper, rear work lights.
now your back to my orginal plan a little.
I have a Ferris commercial mower mower...61" cut very heavy front end similar to the Scag. Except this is one of those 3 wheel mowers(think yazoo) where the deck in front picks up. I actually thought about building a snow blade for the front of it but worry about the weight and the electric lift cylinder. However now you have my wheels spinning again on it...to build it so the weight of the trailer just pushes the deck agasint the ground instead of lifting the deck up to the trailer tounge...then strain on the lift.
Hmm.... It is a little different setup in front, isn't it. I agree, I expect you'd want to keep the weight off the deck itself. How about a single straight piece of heavy wall 2x2 tubing between the two wheel supports? Weld a couple of short pieces of 1/4" strap on the underside of each end and it would be a "drop-on" fit. Drill a hole in the outside piece of strap on each side, tack-weld a nut on there, and put a bolt with a short handle welded on it into each nut, and you'd have a drop-on hitch mount that would be secure enough to handle trailers, easily removable, and you could mount the hitch ball in the center like mine. Only problem I could foresee is it might try to twist if you push/pull anything very heavy with it. You could maybe avoid that by instead of the above, making the end straps a little long, drilling matching holes, and slipping a 1/2" x 4" bolt through them -- assuming there would still be room for the casters to swing freely. You'd have to remove two bolts each time you wanted to lift it off and store it, but otherwise it should work fine. Sounds like a fun little project.
Should also have mentioned that with this method you'd be back to what I've got, which means using the trailer tongue jack to hook up and unhook every time. No big deal to do. I don't think I'd try to lift a trailer tongue with that electric deck lift, it's probably sized just to handle the mower deck.
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2009 Polaris Sportsman 500 EFI X2, Green/black. Front brush guard, Front cargo bars, Warn RT-30 winch, rear bumper, rear work lights.
How much tounge weight before it breaks?
