It took me awhile to notice the thread was 2 years old but this is the first time I heard about plastic melting on anything other than an 800. I wonder why other people had problems on 500s and I didn't on my '97, '01, '06, '08, and my other '08. There's no way my luck is good enough for it to not happen to me if it was a common problem.

 

Its been 2 years since this thread started, but some people are still having problems with the heat and melting plastics. Polaris does have available now new heat shields that seem to have fixed the problem. They are very similar to the heat shields that I built myself where they attache to the fram and wrap almost all the way around the pipe. It beleive that they are about 50 bucks a set if you have to buy them. They also come standard on the 08 500's, I don't know about the 800's.
Mooseye, I noticed that about the mounting bracket on mine also but if it was to be moved back any the springs attaching the muffler would hit the suspension spring in back.
Jumbo , do a search on this and you will see that there has been numerous post about this since the body style change in 05. So maybe you have had some good luck.

 

I've seen a LOT of posts on 800s melting the plastic but don't remember any on the 500s.

 

Maybe the guy welding the bracket on the day yours were made did it correctly???

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: jumbofrank

It took me awhile to notice the thread was 2 years old but this is the first time I heard about plastic melting on anything other than an 800. I wonder why other people had problems on 500s and I didn't on my '97, '01, '06, '08, and my other '08. There's no way my luck is good enough for it to not happen to me if it was a common problem.</end quote></div>

 

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: MoosEye

Maybe the guy welding the bracket on the day yours were made did it correctly???

</end quote></div>

Yeah, maybe I just got lucky 4 out of 4 times and the rest of you guys are unlucky. I guess this is the one thing where the family curse that haunts me doesn't apply. I have terrible luck with everything else in general.