To repair or part-out, that is the question

RidgeRunner · Post by **RidgeRunner** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 4:52 pm

My brother was riding his 906 recently when his chain came apart. I got him home and had a new chain on in no time. Shortly after that incident he noticed oil drips under the bike, and now we found the chain has actually knocked a hole in the case at about the 11 o'clock position over the front sprocket. Instant automatic chain lube! My question is...is this repairable (would an epoxy repair work?) or should we start parting-out the old Duc? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

fasterdammit · Post by **fasterdammit** » Fri Apr 29, 2005 6:15 pm

ugh ... hole in crank case = bad

You can always try JB Weld; they say that stuff will tolerate almost anything, including cracked blocks, but ... I'd consider that a very temporary patch and nothing more - definitely not a 'solution'. How bad is the hole? Best bet would be find a salvaged bike or a similarly sized engine out of whatever, and swap case halves.

Lousy luck, that's for sure. Hope there was no get-off involved ... wallet damage stings, but at least you can walk away from it ...

Duck01 · Post by **Duck01** » Mon May 02, 2005 11:02 am

Yep - sounds ugly - however, I'd be taking the bike to a specialised engineering type shop, & seeing if they can weld it up. I once had to get the same thing done to the crankcase of a Yamaha trail bike I had, & it worked out fine, was relatively cheap, & did'nt leak.
Being a ex-bike mechanic, I've also seen such welding done at customer's request at times, & although the repair is traditionly not 'guaranteed' - it's often worth a go........

jomo · Post by **jomo** » Thu May 12, 2005 11:31 am

Gotta agree with Duck01. I think it is a very common repair. You can be lucky, I have broken 5 chains on road bikes in 28 years (all Ducatis) and only damaged one case on my first Ducati 900GTS. Luckily they had an extra web of alloy in front of the sprocket as a guard to protect the oil filled part of the crankcase.

I am very particular with maintanence and use premium chains, but about 6000km and they start to fail. I suppose a 50 year old who still thinks he is 20 does not help!? My last failure was at the split link which had dried out, so regular greasing every oil change is going to help. I will start a new topic on chains.