How did this one resolve? I'm at a CASE dealer and I'm totally hitting a wall even locating parts to rebuild the 2" axle. All the 2" parts are now obsolete and getting scarce. Is there an aftermarket option?
Hey there Muffler Bearing,
Man it's a twisted tale but I'll try to summarize. There were three different axle hub assemblies that went on the 85XTs. Two had the same part number, 189989A2 (most of the parts diagrams show part number 189988A2 for some reason), and are interchangeable with your sprocket and chains. The original more prone to break version has a dust seal on the interior end where the sprocket slides on. Later versions, version 2, had the bearing exposed and moved outward where it touches the sprocket. This design is supposed to be more robust and what I ended up buying used on eBay
here. The third and probably best axle was when they switched to the 2.5" 95XT axles, which requires you change out the drive motor sprockets. This requires removal of the drive motors and more than I wanted to take on at this point.
You can buy just the axle for around $400 online
here and rebuild the hub assembly if you have version two of the original axle. I did this last year and my axle still ended up breaking between the sprocket and bearing. After comparing the aftermarket axle to the original OEM part I got here recently, the OEM looks like better steel and the sprocket retaining bolt hole was not drilled as deep. Theoretically, this will give the axle more strength at the point where they tend to twist off.
If this happens again, I'm going to consider pulling all axles, selling the three remaining good ones, and using that money to do a conversion to 95XT axles. I was told this only tended to happen when using tracks or land clearing applications. I'm doing the latter.