I will say that I have never owned a sled without some kind of Exhaust monitor on them. It is something that should be installed factory but never will I don't believe until the fuel delivery of all manufactures becomes refined. I person could/can find a lean spot somewhere in the curve and receive a new top end every year under warranty if so desired. My 08' received the "scuffed" piston change(on polaris's bill) early in 09's season. I bought the sled used with @ 500mi at the time. After putting on an A/F gauge I seen a terrible lean spot and talking to my dealer, they wanted to try a different flash. That is when they looked inside and seen the scuffing. Fixed same week and on the snow for the weekend. I came in for every flash that came out including some 'top secret' ones that I reported back to them what the fuel curve looked like and most all had a spot somewhere that would/could take out an engine. So I simply stayed out of those spots, easily. My motor lived until the new head/piston deal(on polaris's bill). I am on boost now so this years monitoring of what flashes are doing is in someone elses hands now. Polaris also fixed some other issues I had come up against with nothing keeping me off the snow for weekend rides. I did suffer the VR issue which was the only thing that caused me to need a pull out of the mtns. Polaris fixed that one also, costing me only $50 on extended warranty. Which brings up a point of buying a 11,000 dollar machine that spends its entire life either WFO or running trails in the midrange low engine load(tough on any 2 stroke if you didn't know) and not think extended warranty is a good investment if one plans on riding the machine for more than a year is not a smart idea. As far as poo goes(my experience) there are areas of the rpm that have needed to be avioded for long periods since any 800 came out. My 03 has @3500 miles on the stock crank with porting and various pipe combinations and wrecks, but I watched the EGT gauge,balanced the clutch yearly,and stayed out of the 6000 ish rpm's which many thought was a crank busting harmonic area. No broken crank or squeaked pistons. I realize that one should think that a brand new off the showroom floor rig should be bullet proof but that in my mind is ridicules to expect a high performance machine to be able to live long under the conditions that we subjected them to and the performance levels we push them at without proper monitoring and evaluations of wear and tear. These sleds have pretty much crossed over from the old trail mod to mtn sled era with some better reliability built in. I don't think any manufacture has been able to bridge this gap of high performance/light weight with absolute reliability. Take these current sleds back to 1998 and see how many people that would have been happy to pay $12 grand for the turn key 'mod' sled.
Seems that most post that are posted here are 'my sled is broken again' type posts and very few of the 'my sled is running good' posts. So maybe it appears that there are these huge widespread issues or maybe only huge widespread posts of a small percentage of owners. I don't know for sure.
I also see a lot of dealer issues that come up and I think that is to bad.
My dealer(KURTS POLARIS) here in missoula has been nothing but helpful and try to improve things as far as polaris will allow. They are riders themselves and work hard for the customer(thanks Lucas).
This new Pro sled does have noticeable improvements over the Dragon and I have to believe that the motor issues have been addressed. The sleds that are stock that have been worked over by Kurts that I have been out with are rocking strong and running consistently. The Polaris guys were out here long before the demo rides and this sled has been around for at least a year getting tested. I believe they have built a winner with this one. But I would suggest extending warranties for those worried, and ride.
