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2 stroke 3000-5000 miles is it????

Smokum said:
Not 100% accurate. The 2016MY is when they brought out their new 800, which is like the 600 now and is actually a pretty good engine. Plenty of trail guys with 10k+ on them without failure. Now, any 800 they made prior to 2016 was a ticking time bomb.

The older 800 zuke was pretty solid as well.....for a 2 stroke.
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Yes the last couple years have been better but they got a long ways to go before people are going to change their thinking about the Polaris 800's and now the 850. I need to see a motor rack up 2000 mountain miles before I'm going to call it a good motor and I haven't seen many 800 Polaris motors make it to that point without a rebuild.
 

Deeppow16 said:
Yup, the only way your doing just the pistons is if your catch the problem before it goes BOOM! If a pin falls out and the ring spins and catches a port and snaps the ring off you can bet the metal is down in the crank.
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Agreed, 100%. Since many consider them a time bomb, doing a top end is almost like summarization every 2-3 years in hopes they catch it before bad things happen.
 
Failures mid-season that have you missing riding time aren't always engine related guys. I've had plenty of other stuff on my Yamaha's break that had me missing riding time. Most notably, the rear skid until the Viper came along. Yes, I have a few 2-stroke buddies that have had an engine failure putting them down for a week or so. But of the last 12 years of riding Yamahas, I bet every other year I've had a suspension failure, or something else, that has also put me down for a week until I could get parts. And yes, I've had my fair share of being towed in. Yamaha does not walk on water.
 
The last 16 years of riding Yamaha's which included 11,000 miles on my 03 RX-1, 14,000 miles on my 08 Apex, and 2500 miles on my 18 Apex, all of which I still own, I have not missed any riding time.
 
Seems like all the articles I read within the established media magazines / on line snowmobile magazines, they practically all have orgasms over the 2 stroke engine. But when you read what the REAL owners of the 2 stroke motors have to say, they don't see all that happy with the durability. 2 strokes remind me of disposable shaving razors where 4 strokes are the high end electric shaving razors. The Polaris switchback looks awesome but it is a disposable razor and I don't have that kind of money to just throw away. I'll stick with the 4 strokes. Way more bang for your buck.
 
RobX-1 said:
The last 16 years of riding Yamaha's which included 11,000 miles on my 03 RX-1, 14,000 miles on my 08 Apex, and 2500 miles on my 18 Apex, all of which I still own, I have not missed any riding time.
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Do your normal year end maintenance & you will be riding all the time. No yearly maintenance plan on some problems. Been riding Yamaha's since 1973 & I remember only 2 times that had a problem.
 
TrueBlue said:
Do your normal year end maintenance & you will be riding all the time. No yearly maintenance plan on some problems. Been riding Yamaha's since 1973 & I remember only 2 times that had a problem.
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I have a cumulative 24,000 miles on my 4-stroke Yamahas since the 2006 model year ... 3 different sleds. I am one of the most anal people when it comes to maintenance and ensuring that my sled is always in perfect running order. During that time I have broken 4 skids (one of the broke twice), bent a subframe, had blown out shocks, and a muffler blow open. That's not counting all of the minor things that will irritate a person. But hey ... the motor certainly was solid!!! Maybe I just ride my sleds too damn hard. Some people have nothing but success stories, and some people have stories otherwise. For every 10 you can find that have nothing but a great experience with Yamaha, I can probably find another 10 on the other side. And this sort of thing happens with every brand.
 
I never had a failure on my Yamaha 2 strokes, both SRX and Vmax4 went close to 26000 Klms. On my dealer recommendation I replaced rings at 16k. When I inspected the rings both sleds had ring gaps at the max limit. Good dealer advice and easy afternoon wrenching with only 200$ in parts. IMO the key to making these sleds live was attention to detail like regular shots of gas line antifreeze to prevent carb freeze up and proper engine warm up/cool down. I was never afraid to run these at full throttle for extended periods, the SRX once ran 20kms at wot, waited 10 minutes for buddies to catch up lol. The new high tech engines are quite different where computer controlled injection can burn a piston on a glitch, it doesn’t help that the engine is already running as lean as possible. I have ridden close to 100k on four strokes and have never been worried about that impending melt down.
 
The Zuk 2-smokes sure were reliable because they weren't jetted too lean. As long as your round trip was under 75 miles and you had stock in Irving you were good to go!
 
CCCT said:
Definitely something to be said being able to hold the 4 strokes it wide open for....forever ;). The only 2 stroke I would feel comfortable doing that with was my old '78 250 ET....from when I was 11 yrs - 16 yrs old, it was only ever WIDE open except for the first start up of the day HA. Too bad there was no ODO on those, i'd be willing to bet I had about 25,000 kms on that thing. Nothing done except add oil, sliders and runners.
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A friend had 2 of those 250 enticers...I had a skiroule rtx 447, and a Laser, and them dam singles were fast and bullet proof...what a blast to rip around with, especially in the woods!
 
Turtle said:
I have a cumulative 24,000 miles on my 4-stroke Yamahas since the 2006 model year ... 3 different sleds. I am one of the most anal people when it comes to maintenance and ensuring that my sled is always in perfect running order. During that time I have broken 4 skids (one of the broke twice), bent a subframe, had blown out shocks, and a muffler blow open. That's not counting all of the minor things that will irritate a person. But hey ... the motor certainly was solid!!! Maybe I just ride my sleds too damn hard. Some people have nothing but success stories, and some people have stories otherwise. For every 10 you can find that have nothing but a great experience with Yamaha, I can probably find another 10 on the other side. And this sort of thing happens with every brand.
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I got better at welding when 11 areas on my rx1 w arm broke....lol...what a mess, but there was a pancake breakfast the next morning, and it made it! ( New arm wouldn't be in for a week).
 
Turtle said:
I have a cumulative 24,000 miles on my 4-stroke Yamahas since the 2006 model year ... 3 different sleds. I am one of the most anal people when it comes to maintenance and ensuring that my sled is always in perfect running order. During that time I have broken 4 skids (one of the broke twice), bent a subframe, had blown out shocks, and a muffler blow open. That's not counting all of the minor things that will irritate a person. But hey ... the motor certainly was solid!!! Maybe I just ride my sleds too damn hard. Some people have nothing but success stories, and some people have stories otherwise. For every 10 you can find that have nothing but a great experience with Yamaha, I can probably find another 10 on the other side. And this sort of thing happens with every brand.
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You must ride really hard to break 4 skids in that amount of miles I know of several people including myself with double amount of miles that have never broken a skid. I even know someone that has 3 times the amount of miles & has never broken a skid. If you beat them to death there going to break something.
 
biffdotorg said:
To be fair, let's be realistic about what happens to these 2-stroke engines.

There are rare cases where the engine blows up. When a two stroke guys says he blew his engine, it may be nothing more needed than a top end and pistons. To those that wrench on these on a regular basis, that's a 3 beer afternoon.

So to be clear, we are not talking about the crank going, and all pistons flying through the hood and leaving the chaincase on the trail. Hell, my buddies took delivery of new AC SnoPro's and got spare sets of pistons and rings when NEW!!

That being said, I don't want to deal with it. There are too few weekends to ride let alone wrench. But let's not blow this out of proportion. If you want to talk about expensive crap, ask the doo guys how much it costs on a top end rebuild if it takes out a $500 stator!!
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Well I blew up a 2012 & 13 and my buddy a 13 all 3 took out the cranks and all went with under 500 miles on them. It was an oil issue and piston skirt issue on those yes my other 13 has 4,000 miles on it but oil injector turned way up and the 14 has no problems all we're and are 136" switchbacks.
 
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