Hold the phone here...was i insinuate anything directly toward you? no
I assumed so by "who dont know how to maintain a sled?" if I assumed wrong then I will apoligize and ask you be more clear with who an insult is aimed at.
Back a few years the local sled rental place had 20 in a week burn down (slow tourist tours with no speed) in a week. Thats info I wish I had before I got this sled. And they were maintained by the local Yamaha shop. Just because it has not happened to you does not mean it doesnt exist.
And once again according to that same shop if you rode it like you stole it you probably will never see this happen. Sled ran perfect for me, problem occured after girfriend rode it slow. Boring stuff below, skip if you like
Fluid dynamics,
Viper seems plauged by the same issue race cars are. Water from engine meets at thermostat on intake manifold, water from left side point directly at water coming from right side. Side that is hotter and has more pressure pushes through.
So...first left side is hotter and pushes until right side gets hotter and takes over and the process goes on. Now usually this is fine. But in a high performance engine with lots of ignition advance (sound familiar to Viper engine) this can be a problem. As left bank gets hot and flows out the thermostat housing the right bank is heating up. Lets say engine is getting very hot and right side has to get even hotter to push water out. On a Chevrolet engine the head does not flow straight through (sound familair to Viper?) so this creates hot spots. On these hot spots the advanced timing combines with a spot that is hot and detonation occurs. If the same scenario occurs with really good gas and not as advanced timing the tops of the piston can get hot enough to melt at around the rings or even pull parts of the piston off.
Fix for our super mod engines drill front of Chevrolet heads and run water from there to a y to the radiator. Opticool has holes in head gasket to make the flow even in all cylinders, kinda doing a poor mans fix to coolant flow issues.
This weekend will tell if that fix works
I have a collection of aforementioned pistons from my racing days....lol.