What a piece of junk skid plate! I made mine so it bolts to the engine mount and the rear oem bolts I was gonna get aroung to adding the other 2 but nevermind. If you can flush out the piece I would just weld a plate over the hole and not split the case .02$

 

FlyingFinn - good try at detective work, but there is absolutely no rust on the bike.. You are seeing a day's worth of mud there.. And the crack on the left side is because I bent the piece back to inspect the hole and cracked it in the process.
The thing is welded on there from the factory, no?! Got a pic of one from a fresh bike?

The weld popped at that one end from the hard hit. There is a dimple in the skid plate that looks like I shot it with a 9mm... Trust me, that is not from prior damage, that is from a HARD hit. I'm guessing that me & my bike are close to 500lbs, coming down from a few feet in the air, landing on top of something solid... Not too much is going to hold up to that..

 

Sounds good, you're da man. Looks like you found the weakest spot in that skid plate design. Abuse any bike hard enough and at some point something's going to give.

 

I weld aluminum. Its far best to pull the piece so it can be cleaned on both sides. If not, oil will weep through the aluminum as its being welded and it can be porous.

David I also weld for a living.

 

Yep, will start pulling the motor this week or next..

Call of Duty Black Ops comes out today so I'm hoping that doesn't suck me in too badly.. I wanna get this fixed! haha

Has anyone taken that part of the case off? How much crap am I going to have to go through to get that off?

 

I'd try and fix it without pulling the whole motor down.
I'd be thinking of using some sort of "as used by NASA" glue and glueing a plate over the hole.
Thats a big job and i'm a particularly lazy character.

 

But you've got to get that chunk out. Pull down the engine as far as needed to get that chunk and then consider additional efforts to properly weld or to try a patch.

Splitting cases means everything comes apart. The tranny will be disassembled too. I've broken a couple of gears over the years and done this job before. Not too hard, just takes time.

I'm trying to finish GTA4 soon, to replay the COD MW(a one day game), so that I can play the black ops after Xmas.

 

Yep, that's the plan. I hope I don't have to go far! hahaa

Just picked up COD, can't wait to get home!

 

If it happened on the road the repairs would be covered on your insurance.

 

Quick and dirty fix that will probably last the life of the bike - thread the hole with a tap and plug with a short bolt with a little gasket sealant around the seating surface.

Not the skid plate's fault, though - just bad luck. Well, except for the too long mounting bolts that contributed. Good idea to trim them down to the bare minimum.