Anyone making stronger motor covers yet? Cracked my stock one

[happyinmotion]

Front wheel kicked up a rock, cracked the right motor cover and bruised my big toe. The toe will fix itself; the cover won't. So, anyone making a stronger replacement cover yet?

The cover is just cast magnesium. It's thin and pretty exposed. I think I'm not the only one to break this part?

I'm more worried about protecting the housing behind than the cover. The cover is an $87 part; the housing means a new motor. You can see from my pics that there's some deformation in the motor housing. The mating surface where the gasket goes has some damage. I've filed it flat but is that flat enough? We'll see when the new parts arrive if I get a good seal or not. Either way, a stronger cover that projects ahead of the mating surface would protect the seal area from impact.

I'm also keen to protect the gears. The cover was pushed back into the gears, making a horrible noise when the bike was moving. The gears are steel so cut away the back side of the case, leaving lots of shavings in the transmission fluid. You can see the scraped area in the third pic. I think the gears are fine - I was only 15 km from the van so the gears didn't have to run in metal shavings for too long and the fluid leak was slow enough that there was still oil in there at the end of the ride. Still a longer ride or a faster leak wouldn't be good for the gears.

 

[Erwin P]

I know there are carbon covers for over this part.

 

[happyinmotion]

Any links to those?

Enduro Hog do a plastic stick-on cover. That'll stop scratches but not rocks.

Carbon Parts have done a forged carbon cover but they don't seem to sell them yet. I doubt that a thin cover is going to be stiff enough to help much in an impact like this.

Racetorx do a CNC'd replacement for the left motor cover but not the right side. I presume that's aluminium. That's the kind of thing I'm looking for.

 

[Theo]

Here is another one:
CMT Compositi | Right carbon crankcase protection for Stark Varg Stark Varg 2023 - 2024
They say it weighs 30 grams.
I'm not an expert on the subject but I personally wouldn't buy a carbon part for protection aginst impacts.

 

[happyinmotion]

Yeah, the stick-on carbon parts are mostly for looks. Fine if that's someone's thing, but that's not my thing. The bike's generally covered in so much mud that you can't tell what it looks like.

I just don't want it to break when I bang it on rocks.

 

[Erwin P]

I don't use them myself, but carbon bolt on parts have proven their use in enduro.
You see them a lot on 2 stroke exhaust and they prove to take quite the beating and less bent exhaust.

Carbons real weakness is getting twisted and bend, however when screwed to a solid object it won't so it will take a serious beating before giving in.

 

[happyinmotion]

Carbon exhausts are large curved parts with the impact in line with the radius of the curve. That's a geometry that helps it to be good and strong.

A carbon cover over this casting is going to help, sure, but this would be an impact on the thin edge of a stuck-on part. I don't see the current designs having much benefit and I haven't seen any testing or proof that they work.

Whereas a thick CNC'd piece of decent aluminium alloy is definitely going to be stronger than thin die-cast magnesium. It will be heavier, but I would rather have an extra 100 g of weight to stop me losing my transmission fluid if the cover cracks again.