I have a surface-to-LKO space station module lifter. I had my payload module assembly attached via docking ports under a long aero fairing. At some point between MECO and circulization, the docking port attached to the nose of the lifter would overheat and explode, whether or not I had ejected the aero shell. Monitoring heat in debug showed a normal amount of heat in the ports (about 210) and normal heat flow through them (-65.) However, I happened to catch it just before it exploded. The heat suddenly dropped to zero, then cycled rapidly between 0 and over 4000 for about 1 second before it blew. The way it cycled rapidly between 0 and 4000+ like that has to be a bug, as it's way outside the normal range. It's not the heat creep you get when you are adding heat faster than it can escape. My time scale was 1 at that point. I fixed the problem by removing the exploding port in the VAB, and attaching the payload port directly to the nose of my lifter. Still decouples just fine, so it was redundant anyway.
