All-
Thought I would pass this along to you all so that what happend to me will not happen to you. I currently own a 2004 Sport Touring, 1800 miles, 550 F/C motor. Great sled and in mint condition. Now let me first preface this by saying that this sled has been cared for, not ridden hard and I regularly do all the recommended maintenance as required. This was also NOT MODIFIED, 100% stock.
Last week I was out riding, crusing around 35-40 MPH and the sled slowly started to loose power, eventually it died. After doing a quick check of everything I could think of I attempted to restart. Well it ran, but like dog meat. Finally was able to determine that it was running on one cylinder. Checked spark, OK, checked fuel, OK, put my finger over the plug hole and it seemed to have compression but no go. Well I got some guys to give me a hand in towing it back to the truck, loaded it up and went over to my local Polaris dealer. Service manager takes my sled in, comes back 15 minutes later tells me that I popped a piston and the engine needs a rebuild. Um, say what? Not sure he was pulling my leg I took my sled home. However before I did he did give me a "tech tip" concerning piston seizure in these engines, and told me that this is not the first of it's kind he has had to fix.
After I got home I pulled the head cover off and sure enough the piston on the pull side was wasted, blown right through and pieces of piston and rings had been in the combustion chamber, the cylinder wall was all scored up and boy what a mess. Needless to say I was very upset. Before I went any further I decided to call Polaris. After talking to thier warranty department they pretty much told me there was nothing they could do. It was out of warranty. When I pressed the guy on the phone about the "tech tip" that I had which specifically addressed this exact failure (I'll get into the details of that later) he had no answer. The net sum was that Polaris was not going to do a thing about this.
So what about this "tech tip" you ask. Well it seems as though there was enough of a problem with the way these engines were configured when they shipped that in at least some of them this failure occured. This tip covers all 2004 550 Fan cooled engines and select 2005 engines manufatured before September 2004. It covers three areas. It calls for a change in the piston to cylinder wall clearance, it calls for the needle jets and jet needles to be changed and finally an adjustment to the air screw settings. The tech tip number is S-04-09-02. The techincal specs are as follows:
Piston to cylinder wall clearance must fall between .114 and .135 MM. This same clearance must be met if going over sized with an OEM piston
Change needle jets to Q-4 480 (PN 3131593) this part number has been superseeded by this (PN 3130947)
Change jet needles to 6BGY-41 (PN 3131592)
When installing jet needle ensure the E clip is in the #3 position and adjust the air screw to 3/4 turn out on soft seat EXCEPT for 04-05 Trail RMK and 04 PRO X Fan.
I highly suggest if you have a sled that falls under this "team tip" you make these adjustments now or risk having your engine blow up.
Now lucky for me I do my own mechanical work and rebuilt the engine on my own. The total cost was just shy of 500.00 for a .5MM over bore with new Wiesco pistons. Both cylinders were done even though my local dealer said only one needed to be done. I'm not a proponent of running a motor like this with different bores. I had to completely tear the engine down to clean up all the exploded piston and ring parts out of the top and lower end. It even blew pieces into the air box and exhaust pipe. I have pictures that document the entire teardown and show up close the carnage my engine suffered. I posted pix in my "member gallery" to document the entire rebuild.
http://www.snowmobilefanatics.com/gallery/default.asp?user=8076
It could have been a lot worse so I am thankful of that. This by no means indicates the engine is a bad powerplant, rather it was misconfigured and as such failed. I cannot express my disappointment in the fact that Polaris would not even admit that there was a problem when I was on the phone with them, nor even when asked pay for the labor to fix it with my offer to pay for the parts which I thought under the circumstances was a fair compromise all things considered.
My other beef is that since this is known to happen enough to justify a "team tip" then at least Polaris should make it a point to notify those that own these sleds that they risk damaging thier engines if action is not taken.
Thought I would pass this along to you all so that what happend to me will not happen to you. I currently own a 2004 Sport Touring, 1800 miles, 550 F/C motor. Great sled and in mint condition. Now let me first preface this by saying that this sled has been cared for, not ridden hard and I regularly do all the recommended maintenance as required. This was also NOT MODIFIED, 100% stock.
Last week I was out riding, crusing around 35-40 MPH and the sled slowly started to loose power, eventually it died. After doing a quick check of everything I could think of I attempted to restart. Well it ran, but like dog meat. Finally was able to determine that it was running on one cylinder. Checked spark, OK, checked fuel, OK, put my finger over the plug hole and it seemed to have compression but no go. Well I got some guys to give me a hand in towing it back to the truck, loaded it up and went over to my local Polaris dealer. Service manager takes my sled in, comes back 15 minutes later tells me that I popped a piston and the engine needs a rebuild. Um, say what? Not sure he was pulling my leg I took my sled home. However before I did he did give me a "tech tip" concerning piston seizure in these engines, and told me that this is not the first of it's kind he has had to fix.
After I got home I pulled the head cover off and sure enough the piston on the pull side was wasted, blown right through and pieces of piston and rings had been in the combustion chamber, the cylinder wall was all scored up and boy what a mess. Needless to say I was very upset. Before I went any further I decided to call Polaris. After talking to thier warranty department they pretty much told me there was nothing they could do. It was out of warranty. When I pressed the guy on the phone about the "tech tip" that I had which specifically addressed this exact failure (I'll get into the details of that later) he had no answer. The net sum was that Polaris was not going to do a thing about this.
So what about this "tech tip" you ask. Well it seems as though there was enough of a problem with the way these engines were configured when they shipped that in at least some of them this failure occured. This tip covers all 2004 550 Fan cooled engines and select 2005 engines manufatured before September 2004. It covers three areas. It calls for a change in the piston to cylinder wall clearance, it calls for the needle jets and jet needles to be changed and finally an adjustment to the air screw settings. The tech tip number is S-04-09-02. The techincal specs are as follows:
Piston to cylinder wall clearance must fall between .114 and .135 MM. This same clearance must be met if going over sized with an OEM piston
Change needle jets to Q-4 480 (PN 3131593) this part number has been superseeded by this (PN 3130947)
Change jet needles to 6BGY-41 (PN 3131592)
When installing jet needle ensure the E clip is in the #3 position and adjust the air screw to 3/4 turn out on soft seat EXCEPT for 04-05 Trail RMK and 04 PRO X Fan.
I highly suggest if you have a sled that falls under this "team tip" you make these adjustments now or risk having your engine blow up.
Now lucky for me I do my own mechanical work and rebuilt the engine on my own. The total cost was just shy of 500.00 for a .5MM over bore with new Wiesco pistons. Both cylinders were done even though my local dealer said only one needed to be done. I'm not a proponent of running a motor like this with different bores. I had to completely tear the engine down to clean up all the exploded piston and ring parts out of the top and lower end. It even blew pieces into the air box and exhaust pipe. I have pictures that document the entire teardown and show up close the carnage my engine suffered. I posted pix in my "member gallery" to document the entire rebuild.
http://www.snowmobilefanatics.com/gallery/default.asp?user=8076
It could have been a lot worse so I am thankful of that. This by no means indicates the engine is a bad powerplant, rather it was misconfigured and as such failed. I cannot express my disappointment in the fact that Polaris would not even admit that there was a problem when I was on the phone with them, nor even when asked pay for the labor to fix it with my offer to pay for the parts which I thought under the circumstances was a fair compromise all things considered.
My other beef is that since this is known to happen enough to justify a "team tip" then at least Polaris should make it a point to notify those that own these sleds that they risk damaging thier engines if action is not taken.
