[Bizzar]

I was wondering how hot a fan cooled sled should be.  i have never had a fan and my liquids never seemed to get very hot.  i was riding for maybe 10-20 miles and i stoped and the spark plugs would burn my hand if i held them. is this normal?  i dont have a high temp guage so i dont know if it is over heating.

 

[Golsovia]

Plugs on any machine I've run whether fan or liquid cooled are normally too hot to hang on to when the machine is up to operating temperature. If you ride when the snow is wet and the temps are close to melting/freezing a fan gives off considerable noticable heat. This is normal. (The heated air a fan produces is a nice advantage if you ride in very cold temps.) Fans are very reliable engines though they may not take as much abuse as the liquid cooled engines. I've run fans for tens of thousands of miles without burning them up but I don't as rule run them at their max rated rpm for a significant amount of time. I figure you can double, maybe triple the life of an engine by staying 10-30% under max. You don't gain a great deal in performance for the engine life it costs if you run at max. If you do run the engine really up there or you run it in warm weather most of the time you might want to look into using an oil made specifically for fan cooled two-strokes. They contain a higher level of detergents than TC-W3 oils which are designed more for the needs of outboard (constant, often high speed, liquid cooled) motors. The higher detergency allegedly helps to prevent deposits from baking onto the hotter internal parts of the fan cooled engine.