I was just wondering if anyone other than me was having problems with their sportsman 800 melting near the exhaust chamber. It started to melt near the AWD sticker at 78hrs. I have heard about people complaining when their 700EFI's melting but none about the 800's. i will probably take it to my dealer and get a new plastic piece because the red piece of plastic on hte side will not pop in the hole like it did when i bought it.
Thanks,
please respond

 

I put a 800 header on my 700 and had the plastic start to melt. I made some brackets to hold the plastic away from the header. Click here for Melted plastic pics.. In the pics you can see the brackets I made. Hope this helps.

 

Welcome to the club. Nothing special about us...just 800 owners. Yes your 800 will melt the plastic. The Polaris fix is to put double heat tape on the plastic and replace the plastic. Well at over 700 degrees measured with a temp gun guess what...that heat tape melts like butter. I have had my headers ceramic coated AND use the HL heat fighter kit. Seems to be a ton better now. I made a post about this over at HL back in April and a few here. Seems I let the cat out of the bag. Got plenty of negative responses from northerners who dont get the heat we do.

 

its a crying shame that you have to fix the melting plastic by coating your own headers. polaris should pay to have that done if your plastic continues to melt. polaris or polaris dealers never want to own up to there problems.

 

i wonder what triggers a recall. does polaris base it on a certain # of complaints, a % of complaints vs model sold, seriosness of defect. it makes me wonder.......

 

I don't know, but if something as simple as the above brackets will fix the problem, it would be easy on Polaris and great for us customers. My plastic is ordered. They said they would double up on the heat shield. I going to look for brackets.

 

i dont know. but i myself view that as a serious problem. that front fender proly cost around $300 dollars and if it last till your warranty runs out your screwed unless you have a good dealer which is few and far between.

 

i'm VERY concerned about all the problems i've been reading about lately............and about how POORLY Polaris is treating the customer!

i'm starting to think twice about buying a 2006 Polaris.

i've read about Bionic's mistreatment over his wheel situation, MELTING side panels on more than a dozen 800's, floorboards that can't take a hit by a piece of wood, the topic on the SP600 catching on FIRE, "E-58" codes or something like that, loose this, falling-apart that.........WTF is going on here?

Dealers not setting the ATV up right? forgetting to torque stuff?.......or is Polaris starting to build crap again like back in the 80ties?................and then to top it off NOT TO STAND BEHIND THEIR PRODUCT and DENY WARRANTY WORK! WTF?

for Polaris not to forsee the melting plastic is just plain stupid. TEXMud shows a very good pic of just how damn close the exhaust is to the side-panel. i mean c'mon Polaris, i ain't no engineer and i can see that's a trouble spot!

what's next for '06?

maybe a lot more trouble!

~MT

 

Completely depends on the dealer. I drive 3 hours out of Dallas for my dealer who will bend over backwards for me. Local dealers here stink...and that goes for any brand.

As far as my photo, please note that it does not show "how damn close the exhaust is to the side-panel". It clearly shows the side-panel RESTING ON the exhaust. Close would be fine....resting on makes for a lovely new scent that glade plugins will be selling: "ode de melting plastic".

 

LMAO![img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]