2001 Polaris Virage Bad Piston

[Bluedmax]

Can anyone help? I'm need to get to the stator, but want to make sure I don't break something. I believe it's behind the flywheel I have pictured above and will need a puller that threads into the 3 holes right?

[K447]

Can anyone help?
- will need a puller that threads into the 3 holes -

Have you made use of the information resources that can be found at this link?

http://polarispwcknowledge.shorturl.com/first-things-to-do

And here

[Bluedmax]

I’ll ck them out, thx.

[Viper Pilot]

If you haven't already done it, just get a standard harmonic balancer puller from the auto parts store. You can rent them for free, but I just bought one a long time ago since I'm always working on something with an engine. They're not that expensive and you'll probably use it again. Don't thread the puller bolts into the flywheel more than 4 or 5 turns or you can contact the stator and destroy it. Also, don't be afraid to hit the center puller bolt with an impact wrench to get the flywheel to pop loose. They can be really stubborn. Neither or mine were, but some folks have reported that they are practically welded on and go off like a shotgun when they turn loose. Anyway, don't King-Kong the impact wrench. Just a few quick blips of the trigger will probably do it. "Finesse" it as they say.

[Bluedmax]

Great info thanks for sharing, this is exactly what I needed! I rented a puller and it worked perfectly. Your tips were also extremely helpful. I see what you were saying now about threading the bolts in too far and would have definitely done that if I hadn't known. I also had the "shotgun" release and would have been nervous about how tight I was getting it if you hadn't mentioned that either.

[Marinejak]

Just curious what you needed up doing? My front piston looks the same. I haven't found any aluminum pieces yet though.

[Bluedmax]

Sorry for the delayed reply, I didn't have my notification turned on.
Kind of a long story. I ended up buying a new engine from SBT in Florida. This wasn't my first choice but was all I could find. I installed the new engine, went through all the break-in procedures, and after a few weeks and not very many total hours of riding this summer, I noticed the bilge pumping water out. Come to find out, almost all of the 6 exhaust manifold bolts had come out, blew the front gasket out, and was leaking water into the hull. I ordered a new set of exhaust gaskets, reinstalled the manifold (this time with loctite on the bolts), and after only another couple hours of riding, noticed the same thing happened. Only this time the 4 short bolts had snapped off. I pulled everything back apart, and after lots of checking, discovered the exhaust port surfaces between the 2 cylinders where the exhaust manifold surfaces mate up were 0.013 off, or not flat across both surfaces. So I called SBT since I was within my 1 year warranty and they told me that didn't sound right and to return the engine. So I pulled the whole engine back out, but before returning, inspected the rest of the engine. When looking through the intake ports, I found the front piston (same piston that was damaged on my original engine) was heavily scored already. See the attached pics... the first pic is the front piston heavily scored, second pic is rear piston that looks perfect. On a side note I have another separate thread going on Greenhulk (2001 Virage 700 Engine Vibration) and some of the guys there suggested this could have been due to the water leaking between the manifold and cylinder. Since the water flows from the exhaust manifold to the engine, the thought is that the front cylinder was overheating due to lack water from the leak (made sense to me). So I sent the engine back to SBT and fast forward to TODAY I just received the replacement engine. SBT sends a report with the replacement engine documenting what they found wrong with the bad engine that was returned. In addition to the exhaust manifold surfaces being misaligned, they also reported there was no oil in the front cylinder and the piston skirt and crankshaft were extremely dry. So now I'm really concerned again. It seems to me that whatever caused the front piston on my original engine to fail was related to the oiling / carb system and may still be an issue which was damaging the front piston on the new engine. I don't want to start running this 3rd engine now without finding out if I have something wrong with my oil system. I'm still running the stock oil feed system and am not sure where to start. I do have oil flowing to the carb through the feed hose (by gravity), which I believe feeds the mix equally to both cylinders. If that's the case, then why would only 1 cylinder have a problem?? I'll need to do some additional research on how to inspect / test the oiling system before firing this new engine, but also hoping someone might jump in with some guidance...