I know this is an old post, but this weekend I ran into the melting plastic issue on my 06 Outti 800 Max. I was riding up hilly twisty trails at about 3-5 mph when I started smelling melting plastic. It joined the left side panel to the the panel by the rear of the seat, and melted a hole in the bottom of the seat. The engine showed no signs of over-heating with the coolant temperatute staying at it's normal 210 reading. Don't know why it decided to do it now. Bike has 125 hours with over 50% of the time being the above type of riding. Seems that at slow speeds not enough air is moving through the body work to push out the radiant heat from the exhaust pipe and engine. But like you I feel this type of machine should be able to do this. Is there any know solution for this problem? I love driving the machine fast but I also like like riding the slow technical sections. If there are others who have encountered this issue?

 

This is a very common problem on some outys. About 1 out of 8 according to a 200 Outy rider poll. Mine doesn not have that problem. It does get hot though, especially riding up a slow rocky trail, it gets hotter than hell, fan going all the time. An 800 cc engine is bound to put out some heat.

What is not common is that canam will fix this problem under warranty. If it keeps melting, they'll keep fixing it. Pain in the a$$ for you though. First they they do is put a better heat shield under the seat.

Ace Hardware and others have heat reflecting tape you can buy.

This is such a common problem that ceramic dipping of the exhaust pipes are a discounted volume buy on another forum. You send yours in, they send somebody else's finished one back to you, then send yours to the next guy, etc.

Don't use exhaust wrap, too much rust gets underneath. Good luck.