The owner will not return my phone calls or emails, so there really is no discussion happening..
Since you comment on this thread, why not post some facts about the REAL condition of this engine? and how it did not fail.
With all due respect.. it would NOT have been an catastrophic failure if he had continued to run the engine.. In fact, the engine would run the same as it did when he stopped running it... Based on what I have seen..
Yes I was fed up and busy at the end of last season..we had the biggest snow year in 10 years here last year. So contact had been ceased.
Kelsey's kit ran great when it ran. It obviously has some clearance issues AS IT DID THE FIRST TIME THE MOTOR went down. Those issues should have been addressed the first time but instead I was sold a new piston, told to run the other piston (that I WOULD NOT have run if it had been purely my decision) so I put it all back together, ran it again, it ran good for a few rides (although always did like to get HOT on long pulls...like high coolant temps) and then I tore it down after getting abused by another forum member's mostly stock M8...only to find this
Basically I think the pistons and ring gap were too tight, explaining the high coolant temps as well. Maybe even part of the reason the rod bearing took a dive after 175 miles or so..increased friction in the cylinder will obviously shorten the life of the rod bearing. Kelsey, you had an opportunity to take the kit back and examine it when the motor went down, instead you sold me the only replacement piston you had and asked me to run it again. Against my gut instinct, that is what I did. It ran decent for a few rides and then I voluntarily dissembled it before Arctic Man after getting waxed by a few stockers in the mountains. I was tired of hearing the excuses and blame being placed on the outfit that chromes your cylinders or my assumed lack of experience or knowledge, I have an extremely busy business to run and I was just over your customer service approach.
I have been refraining from diving into this much in a public forum, it's not good for either of our businesses, but you repeatedly try to distort the facts, forcing my hand...I have exercised an extreme amount of restraint in this area and discussing your kit in general is something I have tried to stay away from. The motor made great power though at first. There is no doubt.
But I keep this paperweight as a reminder since you refused to refund anything for it and I told you I most likely would be purchasing a new shop sled and selling the 2011, leaving us without a sled to even use the kit on, assuming you would have been able to address the issues.
So now it's all out in the open and everyone is free to form their own opinion...let's try to keep this civil though, people, please.
Side note for the mentioning of tuning inability or failure...I have tuned plenty of sleds using the PC5 and my ability, knowledge, and experience in that area would most likely not be questioned by anyone whos sled has been built or tuned by my shop. This was most certainly not my first rodeo and Kelsey provided me with BD box numbers which were translated over for the pc5 and his mapping was quite close.
) so, with any new product, the more time on it, the better we understand it and make improvements (like we have done already).
)
Sometimes I wonder if it is even worth it for a manufacturer to have a moniker on snowest? One unhappy customer could spell a significant loss in income from at least a portion of the Snowest market. There was another pretty good thread about suspensions that was started with two manufacturers involved and they managed to keep it to a dull roar for about an entire page before it went downhill..
