Making your ATV wider can have some benefits like improved handling and a more stable ride through corners. It’s no wonder this is a popular enhancement for professional and recreational riders. But there are a couple different routes you can take to widening your quad.
To make your ATV wider, you can either get some wheel spacers, flip the wheels around, or you can upgrade your axles and A-Arms with wider aftermarket parts. All options will give you a wider stance, but each come with their own pros and cons.
A very common approach is to put wheel spacers on just the front, or all the way around front and rear. Some people prefer longer A-Arms in the front and wheel spacers in the back, or leave the back as-is. And lastly, the most solid way to widen your quad, is to put longer A-Arms in the front and a longer axle in the rear.
There are easy ways to widen your ATVs stance, and spend less than 100 bucks doing so, which I’ll talk more about later. But first, you should know the pros and cons of widening your ATV, then you’ll have a better idea of which route you want to take.
There are some great advantages to widening your quad from handling improvements to safer riding. But the main reason many riders widen their ATV is for the stability improvements when cornering.
A wider quad will be able to take corners at higher speeds without the risk of tipping or lifting up one side on you. This is also a safety improvement, less chance of tipping means for a safer ride.
But what about the downside? Well for one, some of the widening methods put extra strain on your parts and require maintenance or repairs more often. For example, the wheel spacers method.
Adding a set of wheel spacers to your ATV is a quick and easy way to widen the quad. But it puts extra pressure on wheel on the outside edge of the spindle. This causes what some people refer to as bump steer. Hitting any little bump will pull your steering in ways you weren’t expecting.
Another problem is the added strain to your suspension system when using wheel spacers. You are basically extending the wheels out but keeping the suspension system in place, causing it to take on more of a load than it was originally designed for.
I don’t think any of these are reasons to stop you from getting wheel spacers if you’re just looking for a cheap and quick way to widen your quad. But if you ride pretty rough and want a more reliable option, go with aftermarket parts like widening A-Arms and axles.
Another thing to consider, is where you ride. Some trails have width restrictions on ATVs. Mostly trails with bridges or gates will have these restrictions, but you can get a fine if you’re riding a quad wider than the width restriction on a trail.
The front of the ATV should always be a little wider than the rear. This of course is personal preference and not all ATVs come stock with a wider front.
The front and rear should be pretty close in width either way. But if I had to choose, I would suggest a slightly wider front end.
In fact, a lot of people only widen the front of the quad and they leave the rear as it is, stock. If you only widen the rear, or make the rear wider than the front, the ATV will tip more easily and the handling won’t be ideal.
The reason is that when you’re riding, you’re not paying all that much attention to the rear of the quad. Your eyes are facing forward, in the direction you’re heading. If your rear end is wider than the front. You’ll have to worry about the back end hitting things you wouldn’t expect.
Lets say you make a close pass to a tree, another rider, or any obstacle. You think you’re in the clear because your front tires squeeze by. But if the rear of the quad is wider, your back tires might hit the obstacle and cause you injury, or worse, broken parts.
This may seem hacky, but is actually a pretty common mod.
What you do is flip the wheel around on the hub to give you a few extra inches of width. It’s completely do-able, people do it all the time and it works.
Most wheels will have a deeper inside of the rim than the outside. The wheel will bolt back on to the hub the same way with the same lug nuts. It will just be flipped so the shallow side of the rim is facing in towards the ATV.
I don’t really like this method because of where the tires stem is after you flip them. You could always drill a new hole in the rim and put a new tire stem in. But even then, on the front, you could wind up having valve stem clearance problems with the front brakes. I just avoid this method myself, but it can be a quick and cheap way to widen your quad a little bit without having to spend any money.
If you do go this route, keep in mind your tire tread. Some tires have the tread shaped to move in a certain direction. If that’s the case for you, you can try swapping the sides of the quad your tires are on when you flip them.
That way the tread is still facing the right direction.
This is another popular option to take because of how easy and cheap it is to do. For the most part people will add these onto the rear when they widen the front with longer A-Arms, but some people even put these on all four wheels of their machine.
It’s a pretty quick and easy install too. You simply take your wheel off, mount the wheel spacers on the hub where the wheel was, and then mount the wheel onto the wheel spacers. Simple as that, and you’re good to go. Most wheel spacer kits will come with instructions to do the install, and most of the time it’s a pretty straight forward process.
If you ride your quad pretty hard or take turns and jumps at higher speeds, I do not recommend using wheel spacers. You’re better off with longer A-Arms in the front and a longer axle in the back. A lot of people have had good luck with wheel spacers, but I’ve heard the horror stories of a wheel spacer cracking, breaking off, and causing a crash.
If you do mostly light trail riding or don’t like beating on your machine, you’ll probably be fine though. Wheel spacers can be found for around 50 bucks online now a days for a really decent quality set. Check out this set of Freedom Country ATV Wheel Spacers on Amazon to start your search.
This is my preferred method for widening your ATV in the front end. Nothing beats solid parts that you can rely on that you’ve installed on your machine yourself. I usually go for a +2 inch extension on the A-Arms, but it’s really up to you how wide you want your quad.
You can find extended A-Arms for almost any ATV online for between 300 and 450 bucks. Try this ATV Extended A-Arms Search in Amazon. I have had good luck with the Team Alba Racing A-Arms before. Just make sure you get the right ones for your year, make, and model.
To swap the A-Arms out check out my Step By Step Guide To Removing And Installing A-Arms On An ATV article for a guide on how to do the swap.
Most good sets of extended A-Arms will come with instruction, and may have special steps for any special spacers or washers included in the kit.
This is my preferred method for widening the back end of an ATV. It’s a lot harder to do, and will cost a little more than just throwing on some wheel spacers. But when you’re done, you’ll have a solid machine that you don’t have to be careful riding.
You can find extended axles for most ATVs online for a couple hundred bucks a pop. Putting the total for both sides above 400 dollars in most cases. Check out this ATV Extended Axle Search in Amazon to give you an idea of what you’re looking at.
Some of the axles you buy will come with instructions, but a lot of them don’t. So I wrote this How To Change Out An ATV Axle article to give you the step by step procedure if you need it. It will probably take a few hours to change out the axles on both sides of the quad.
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An ATV width increase is one of the most popular machine upgrades, but do you really need it and which method is right for you?
Image from www.
atvconnection.com
The maximum width you can legally make your ATV is 50 inches in most places. Some states are making motions to expand it to 55.
Widening an ATV positively impacts its performance by improving handling and making cornering more stable even when going at higher speeds.
There are two downsides to widening an ATV. First, it puts extra strain on the machine's parts, so you have to increase your diligence with routine checks and maintenance and may need to make repairs and replacements more often. Second, widening your ATV may limit where you can ride. Some trails and parks have width restrictions because there are places on the trail that aren't wide enough for the machine to safely or even possibly fit.
The individual methods of widening your ATV have their own drawbacks and will be discussed below.
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This is a fairly simple, no cost method of widening an ATV.
If you flip your wheels around, inside out, you can instantly increase the width of your ATV by a few inches. You may not have known that you can attach the wheel the same way when reversed.
Flipping the wheels increases the width because the wheels usually have a concave on the machine side of the wheel. When you turn the wheel around, the more shallow side of the rim is closer to the machine, placing more tire on the outside.
This method may not be possible for everyone. If your wheels don't have a concave on the inside, you won't notice any difference. Some tire treads are designed for movement in a certain direction and won't work or wear the same when flipped.
A downside is that if all you do is take the tire off and turn it around, the tire stem will be on the inside of the machine. If possible, you could move the tires to the opposite side of the ATV so the tire stem is still on the outside.
Image from www.boostatv.
com
Wheel spacers are a pretty simple and inexpensive way to widen your ATV.
The first step is to select wheel spacers, making sure to remember that they should be half the width you want to widen your ATV because you'll be putting one on both sides. Then you remove the wheel, mount the wheel spacers on the wheel hub, and replace the wheel. Voila!
The downside to this method is that it doesn't suit rough riding well. If you're going to be punishing your ATV, you will punish the wheel spacers too, potentially causing breakage that could lead to a crash. The larger the wheel spacers, the less punishment they can take.
It's wise to get the smallest wheel spacers for your needs rather than being tempted to go bigger.
You can replace your machine's A-arms with longer aftermarket ones. This requires more investment, often around $400, but it is a tougher upgrade than wheel spacers and suitable for any kind of riding.
This method is also the best choice when you want to add a greater amount of width. Rather than adding larger wheel spacers, jump right to the A-arms.
The aftermarket A-arms will come with step-by-step instructions.
It is also possible to replace the axles with aftermarket ones for added length. This too often costs around $400 and requires more work, but it is tough enough to tackle any riding.
Many aftermarket axles will come with instructions, but if you purchase ones that don't, you can find detailed instructions online. This install is a little more difficult than installing new A-arms.
You don't have to choose just one of these methods. You can pair them depending on the width you want to achieve and whether you want the front wider than the back or for both to be equal.
If all you want to do is make the front a little wider than the back, you could add some small wheel spacers in the front.
If you want more width and for the front to be wider than the back, you can add A-arms in the front and wheel spacers in the back. When widening your ATV with the toughest riding in mind, you could put new A-arms in the front and new axles on the back.
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Nothing in this world lasts forever, but some Chinese products simply surprise with their “durability”. I will talk about my experience of upgrading a children's ATV.
What we have: a KL-789 children's ATV with minor malfunctions, some free time and a desire to stick an arduino lying around there.
What we want: something that lasts longer than one month, preferably with improved performance.
The ATV has two 12V RS550 commutator motors, with a shaft speed of 19300 rpm at idle, connected to the rear wheels with a diameter of ~30 cm through gearboxes with a gear ratio of ~131. Simple math says that the maximum speed of this vehicle should be 19300/131/60 * 3.14 * 0.3 = 2.
31 m/s or 8.3 km/h. In practice, he travels at about 7 km/h. During the selection of new components, I struggled with the desire to make the maximum speed, and the fear that this would be too dangerous a transport for children. Therefore, it was decided that he should go 1.5-2 times faster. In addition to engines, I was not satisfied with it:
Section 0.75-1 sq. mm, which with rated currents of 20A are heated to a significant temperature Those. I was not satisfied with absolutely all the electrics. After some thought, it was decided to use:
0, as the controller of all this In addition, to reduce the rumble of plastic wheels and improve the smoothness of the ride, 4 tires 12.5 "for baby strollers were bought, after which they were slightly modified with a clerical knife, and then they were pulled onto the wheels of an ATV and fixed with self-tapping screws:
When everything arrived, a prototype was assembled on its knees, it turned out that the engines even without load heat up to 70 degrees in 3-5 minutes of operation, I had to buy two coolers for them, and the regulators, on the contrary, even with the fans turned off, do not heat up ( looking ahead, on an ATV under load, they also do not heat up). Because we have two motors on two different sides, it was necessary to solve one more problem - sensory motors spin only in one direction.
Initially, it was planned to disassemble one motor and turn the sensor 180 degrees in it ... but reality has shown that this cannot be done with little bloodshed. Moreover, during experiments with the sensor and timings, one of the regulators partially burned out, as a result, I abandoned the sensor and connected them as ordinary BCs. The sensor itself consists of three Hall sensors that monitor the position of the rotor, and a temperature sensor. It was decided not to leave all this economy, but to connect it to the MK and use it as an engine temperature sensor, an engine speed sensor, and later, knowing the gear ratio, as a speed sensor.
The pwmservo library was somewhat puzzling, it is designed to control servos (regulators in my case) through hardware PWM, with an accuracy of 1 degree, only 180 states, and the “forward” direction is only half the range, i.e. 90 states. It seemed to me that this was not enough, I had to edit the library to the detriment of the cross-platform arduin (it turned out only for controllers with 16 MHz), the result is 1000 states in each direction (the unit is equal to 0.
5 μs of the PWM duration, PWM from 1 to 2 ms).
After the work "on the knee" was more or less debugged, all this equipment was installed on the ATV:
Photo
Engine + gearbox:
Inside a small creative mess of wires (just threw all the wires inside, I wanted to test faster, later brought to human form):
Because the power turned out to be more than 500 W, it was necessary to limit the rate of increase of the gas, if you sharply turn the gas to the maximum from a place, the power will increase smoothly, and will reach its maximum in about 3 seconds. I am sure that without this there would be an effect of instant overturning.
In general, here is a telemetry video recording from the phone screen, everything is visible there, only due to a slightly glitched speed sensor in the left engine (left green column), the speed data is slightly underestimated, the maximum speed achieved on fresh batteries is 18 km/h
Values of the columns: blue - engine temperature in degrees, green - engine speed in rpm, orange - power supplied to the engines in conditional numbers from 0 to 1000, gray - throttle position.
And this is how it goes:
I wasn’t dragged away… it’s slipping, but I rode the ATV itself, and judging by the telemetry, it absolutely doesn’t care who is on top
On the first video, a crunch is heard at the start. On the first evening, the gearboxes completely failed. The problem turned out to be that the gearboxes consist of nylon gears rotating on a 9 mm steel axle without bearings, so the friction force of the gears turned out to be so large that in one gearbox the middle just melted out in the gears and the alignment was lost. In another gearbox, the gear was welded to the axle, and the axle began to rotate in the housing and melt it, as a result of which the gear also lost alignment.
To solve this problem, you need:
The new axles are 5mm, so I had to print bushings on a 3D printer with an outer diameter of 9 mm (like the old axles), and an inner diameter of 5 mm, in order to be able to install the new axles in the old gearbox housing, 11 mm holes were drilled in the gears with a depth of 5 mm with both sides (bearing seats).
The gears are now mounted on bearings, and also generously lubricated with lithol, and for more than six months everything has been running fine in any conditions:
But I don’t stop there, the next step is custom gearbox gears in order to increase the speed to 25-30 km / h.
Kids learn very quickly and are already great at entering a 90-degree turn with a little braking and then a sharp throttle out of the turn.
Sketch, modified pwmservo library, pinount can be downloaded here, all this is in draft form, there is a lot of unfinished and debug code in the code, for which I apologize in advance.
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