otlski
Gold Member
Just in case someone has a similar UTV, I thought I would ask here. At the very least this post might be found by the next guy trying to do the same. I have a Bush Hog Trailhand 4400 side by side. I am replacing the CTV belt. The CVT belt cover is located between the engine and transaxle under the bed. Before I started, it looked like the rear trailing arm would be in the way. It was. I had removed the ten or so bolts attaching the cover and because of the shaft lengths of both the fixed pulley and the active pulley, could not come close to removing it with the rear suspension trailing arm in place.
So I removed the lower bolt of the coil over shock to drop the trailing arm lower, no luck. In fact, the chassis frame where the trailing arm attached looked like a potentially bigger issue. Next I removed the coil over in its entirety, no better. Unable to lower the trailing arm further I removed the axle nut so the spline could slide out. The arm dropped more but not enough. Next removed the brake line and e-brake cable. More travel but not enough. So I removed the whole trailing arm. Still no joy.
At this point it was clear that no amount of twisting and turning would allow the cover to come off because of the aforementioned frame clearance issue. I crawled under and removed four 15/16 bolts holding the engine and transaxle subframe from the chassis frame. After removing the air cleaner the subframe was able to be lowered about half the distance it needed to go to allow the cover to scoot under the chassis frame.
Currently it is hung up from further progress by the exhaust system. After taking care of that it may drop further, enough to work. So is this normal? Have any of you done this on a Bush Hog UTV? Did I miss something obvious? Do other machines require so much gymnastics?
So I removed the lower bolt of the coil over shock to drop the trailing arm lower, no luck. In fact, the chassis frame where the trailing arm attached looked like a potentially bigger issue. Next I removed the coil over in its entirety, no better. Unable to lower the trailing arm further I removed the axle nut so the spline could slide out. The arm dropped more but not enough. Next removed the brake line and e-brake cable. More travel but not enough. So I removed the whole trailing arm. Still no joy.
At this point it was clear that no amount of twisting and turning would allow the cover to come off because of the aforementioned frame clearance issue. I crawled under and removed four 15/16 bolts holding the engine and transaxle subframe from the chassis frame. After removing the air cleaner the subframe was able to be lowered about half the distance it needed to go to allow the cover to scoot under the chassis frame.
Currently it is hung up from further progress by the exhaust system. After taking care of that it may drop further, enough to work. So is this normal? Have any of you done this on a Bush Hog UTV? Did I miss something obvious? Do other machines require so much gymnastics?