Well Fudge.
I was moving the KLR around the garage and bumped it pretty good against the garage door and got this:
It's very brittle.
I looked on eBay for a used one but they were stupid expensive and most of them were just as bad as mine. So my journey of plastic repair education looks like it will have another chapter. I'll let y'all know how it goes, stay tuned.
Is not the standard repair on a KLR to put duct tape over the crack, and a premium repair, the tape's color is matched to the plastic?
But yeah that plastic looks more than a bit dead. I ran into similar trouble with an aftermarket windscreen on a friend's CB750 which lived outdoors for getting on 20 yrs- the screen was OK but the plastic mounting knobs and clamps mostly crumbled when I worked with them. I had to machine and fit new mounting points, at which point he decided he liked the bike better without the screen
I don't like the odds for adhesives there- the plastic looks significantly degraded. I'd go for a mechanical repair; I'd start by drilling a small hole at the apex of the crack to hopefully relieve stress and stop it propagating. Then fit a plastic fishplate spanning the crack, molded by heat for best fit, then screwed thru the fairing- the idea being to avoid adding more stress to the fairing but also hold the crack where it is. Sheet PVC perhaps- thin, maybe 1/8"; something not too rigid that can be easily warmed by a heat gun so its soft and molded to the fairing's contours, trimmed for appearance, drilled for fasteners and painted. Even better if the crack can be pulled closed when the plate is fit. If the plate is more of a strip or series of strips fit on the back side of the fairing it might not look too horrible.
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