So my Red K75, 166,656 miles, seen in my picture needed some riding. First time out in a few months, aside: I'd been using Silver with only 66,000 miles. When I found that Red's speedometer wasn't working, took it home and took the instrument pod apart to clean the contacts. In the process I noted that one of the four 6mm bolts holding it on, had dropped out of the right side. I figured that it had fallen  off somewhere in the previous 10K miles. In another post I described the project and that it wasn't the instrument pod but a connector under the right battery cover that was the actual cause of the speedo failure. Now Red was back together and I took it out for a short ride to check that all was good. So I rode out to Alameda Point, the old naval air station situated on the west end of the island directly across the bay from San Francisco. Putzed around looking at the various changes/projects going on to convert the area to civilian usage when I came down closed off road. Well it really wasn't closed off that well, just some of those moveable water fill able barriers that any bike can go around/through. But as there were workmen around and I felt compelled to be a nice guy and not violate the signs about the road closure. I wheeled around to the left to go back up the way I came when the unthinkable happened. From what I later deduced, the bike's forks didn't turn fully, the clutch was slightly jumpy and I was caught over balanced and dumped. Going down I felt my left knee and ankle take a hit. Instinctively I hit the kill switch and after a moment  started to pick myself up. Now the embarrassing part. I've dropped bikes before. Not terribly often but it happens. But this was right in front of the Point's fire station. Before I even could pick myself up there were a dozen young virile manly fellows, doubt any of them were over 30, there to give me a hand up and righting the bike. As politely as a shaken old duffer can, I declined their offers of further help and managed to ride home (<15 minutes) before the adrenaline wore off. Once home and needing to park the bike back in the garage, I ride down the driveway past the house, take a hard left, stop, and then roll the bike backwards in a hard right into the garage. But the hard left wasn't that hard. In fact any left turn more than you would do in normal riding was blocked. For various reasons this had not been obvious previously in normal riding. So I went in the house and began the recovery business with icing of my left side knee and ankle, talked to a online nurse, then doctor, went and had x-rays made. Nothing broken just some painful bruising. At 78 bruising is always painful. Next day, went out to examine the bike. Left side case saver had torn free, breaking a bit of the fairing. And the fairing itself has a nasty break at the top front of the left side piece. Not that big an issue as I have another full fairing that after painting can be popped onto the bike. But examination of the forks and triple clamps found "AH So" that 6mm bolt that I mentioned having been lost from the instrument pod. It had landed on the lower brace and interposed itself between the brace and the fork stop. Hence the issues with hard left turn which is what I think took me down. Mentioned to the young ladies living next door that any fem's interested in prime males on the hoof might care to have bicycle problems in that particular locale.

Now the query for suggestions. The case savers if you have ever had reason to examine them are mounted at three points with cups filled with a rubber compound with a bolt coming out of the cup. I will attach a photo of the top mount. Anyway at all three mounts the bolts pulled free of the rubber mounting compound.  I spoke with the proprietor of Smith & Company about obtaining some of the old rubber sulfide two part epoxy that they sold for years and was told that basically due to California's environmental laws coupled with manufacturers reorgs it was no longer available. That stuff was fantastic. He recommended 5200 Fast by 3M which I know nothing about. And so would like to ask of the assembled riders/mechanics if anyone has other suggestions or experiences with something to mount the bolts into the cups. I can clean out the old stuff but what to use in its place.
best regards
J.
Photo of the case saver mount

WOW JJ, Sorry to hear that you took a tumble! Glad you are basically ok. A blow to the pride I am sure. I had to get the neighbor to come help me to pick up my RS...in the shed.   I have used the 3m 5200. It is good stuff. Used it to hold the T-top on my fishing boat. I have taken it through it's paces and it has not moved. Is bolted and 5200. Hasn't let loose in 15 years. Stuff works great. I would not hesitate to use it.

I would give the 5200 a try, that stuff is frequently stronger than the stuff you are gluing with it. Just make sure the surfaces are clean.

Never, NEVER, use it on anything you might need to take apart.

An alternative for that part is 9217k46 from McMaster-Carr.

https://www.mcmaster.com/catalog/129/1670/9217K46?SrchEntryWebPart_InpBox=9217k46

You might also want to think about replacing the the top (engine) mount with a solid ally or s/steel spacer. It will absorb more impact and not tear away to kill the engine cases/fairing. I'm pretty sure it was either .75 or Laitch put me onto that after I decided to go skating on black ice with LFB.

Dai wrote:You might also want to think about replacing the the top (engine) mount with a solid ally or s/steel spacer. It will absorb more impact and not tear away to kill the engine cases/fairing. I'm pretty sure it was either .75 or Laitch put me onto that after I decided to go skating on black ice with LFB.

Dai, I don't follow. duck's link to the McMaster-Car alternative makes sense for mounting the top of the case saver to the engine mount. But that mount on Red is solid bolt to the down tube. Not following your description.
J.

Dai wrote:You might also want to think about replacing the the top (engine) mount with a solid ally or s/steel spacer. It will absorb more impact and not tear away to kill the engine cases/fairing. I'm pretty sure it was either .75 or Laitch put me onto that after I decided to go skating on black ice with LFB.

Has anyone gone down at any speed with a firm top mount like that? Seems to me if the "crash" bar is held in place at the top then the bottom part will be banging around on and possibly cracking the oil sump. That wouldn't be the end of the world but you can ride home with scraped cases and fairing parts, a cracked oil sump not so much.

Dai wrote:I'm pretty sure it was either .75 or Laitch put me onto that after I decided to go skating on black ice with LFB.

Wasn't me. I use my legs for crash bars.

Laitch wrote:

Dai wrote:I'm pretty sure it was either .75 or Laitch put me onto that after I decided to go skating on black ice with LFB.

Wasn't me. I use my legs for crash bars.

That's just what I feel like at the moment. Expensive crash bars.

duck wrote:An alternative for that part is 9217k46 from McMaster-Carr.

https://www.mcmaster.com/catalog/129/1670/9217K46?SrchEntryWebPart_InpBox=9217k46

thanks for the reference duck,
I just ordered 6 of them.

Laitch wrote:

[size=16]Wasn't me. I use my legs for crash bars.
[/size]

I hate to admit that I've tried that a couple of times.

#1: K75S getoff: Hyperextended my knee and pushed my tibial plateau down a few millimeters. Fortunately not enough to require surgery but had me on crutches for six weeks.

#2: In a <1 MPH gas station drop of a K1100LT I inadvertently used my foot to keep the crash bar from getting scraped. Broke a tiny bone on the top of my foot and had another episode with crutches.

duck wrote:Laitch wrote:

[size=16]Wasn't me. I use my legs for crash bars.[/size]

I've hate to admit that I've tried that a couple of times.
#1: K75S getoff: Hyperextended my knee and pushed my tibial plateau down a few millimeters. Fortunately not enough to require surgery but had me on crutches for six weeks.
#2: In a <1 MPH gas station drop of a K1100LT I inadvertently used my foot to keep the crash bar from getting scraped. Broke a tiny bone on the top of my foot and had another episode with crutches.

Ooooh, you guys are scaring me. I've already got two pair of crutches and don't want any reason to use them.

jjefferies wrote:

duck wrote:Laitch wrote:

[size=16]Wasn't me. I use my legs for crash bars.[/size]

I've hate to admit that I've tried that a couple of times.
#1: . . . Hyperextended my knee and . . .
#2: . . . Broke a tiny bone on the top of my foot . . .

Ooooh, you guys are scaring me.

Don't be scared, j. The fracture of my leg was so tiny it could only be measured in dollars.

Laitch wrote:Don't be scared, j. The fracture of my leg was so tiny it could only be measured in dollars.

That's the kind that really hurts in the wallet.

My only drop with the bars was in the garage where the bike just fell over when it got knocked off the center stand.  It landed on the right crash bar which immediately broke away from it's mounts and tore a large hole in the right side lower fairing where it exits at the top. 

What made me angry was that, if not for the bar, the bike would have probably landed on the crank cover and the mirror or handlebar.  Actually, after the bar broke loose, that's what it was resting on.  As they are mounted, I suspect the bars are merely decorative.

By going to a rigid mount at the top attachment I feel that the rigidity of the bar is increased so that even if the lower mounts let go the top will keep things intact enough to actually prevent damage to the fairing and possibly the engine cases.

To improve the protection, I was thinking of installing a slider on the bar at the point where it contacts the ground first.  The idea is that the slider may help the bar slide on the ground preventing the bar from catching and being torn loose. 

Fortunately, I haven't had an opportunity to see if the rigid top mount actually works as I thought it would.

Another idea I had was to fabricate a stainless steel "skid plate" that would tie the lower bar mounting points on each side to each other outside of the breakaway mounts.  The idea here is that by tying the mounting points together on both sides of the engine the load would be distributed over twice as many breakaway mounts, possibly reducing the chances the bar would break loose.

Point-Seven-five wrote:By going to a rigid mount at the top attachment I feel that the rigidity of the bar is increased so that even if the lower mounts let go the top will keep things intact enough to actually prevent damage to the fairing and possibly the engine cases.

Exactly. If the lower mounts let go (and they will) the bars are likely to wrap around the crankcase and protect it. I'm not so fussed about fairing damage but I'd rather keep my engine in one piece. Those bonded mounts are a piss-poor solution to a piss-poor piece of design.

For anyone who is new-ish here and not aware, the original design of crashbars bolted directly to the sump. I'm damn sure Hans had a Monday hangover when he came up with that piece of German goodness.

Dai wrote:For anyone who is new-ish here and not aware, the original design of crashbars bolted directly to the sump. I'm damn sure Hans had a Monday hangover when he came up with that piece of German goodness.

Once Hans was re-hydrated, he came up with these for the Polizei. These are attached to a K75.

Yeah. I had something similar in mind when I watched a mate build a sub-frame for a sidecar and thought then that the spreading of the load made sense for a decent set of crashbars. I've asked him about it since, but he admitted that he built it as he went along and never did end up creating drawings for it.

jjefferies wrote:Dai, I don't follow. duck's link to the McMaster-Car alternative makes sense for mounting the top of the case saver to the engine mount. But that mount on Red is solid bolt to the down tube. Not following your description.
J.

Sorry - missed this when replying to .75. Replace the top breakaway with an 8mm stud that screws into the frame mount. Over that, fit a 25mm wide spacer (too lazy to go and check right now, but IIRC the ones I made for LFB are 22mm dia s/steel), then bolt up the crashbar. Top impact forces are transmitted through the 8mm stud to the frame where they are more likely to be dissipated harmlessly through the frame and engine cases. Just about every other OEM and aftermarket crashbars for just about every other bike mount their crashbars solidly to the frame. It's a bit more difficult where the engine is a stressed member (or in our case, just somewhere to hang the frame), but even then most OEM and third-party have some (unfortunately often a bit ugly) way around that problem.

Well I've ordered a full set of the soft things (they refer to them as sandwich's)  from Duck's source. So for a moment that'll take care of things. But going forward my concern is not to break the engine case and the lower two connections seem to me to be relatively fragile. So the Police version seems interesting.

Posts 1, 2 and 3 refer to the 3M product 5200 sealant (which is available as either standard cure or fast cure). I am in the process of converting the spoked back wheel (uses a tube) of my Triumph Tiger 800 XCX to tubeless and have done extensive forum reading on suitable products and processes. There is much discussion on the use of sealants to put into the inner wheel well dimples where the spokes screw into the spoke nipples. This is the main area where air can leak out due to small gaps and the movement of spokes and nipples during road use. Various sealant products have been used, but forum reports nominate 3M 5200 as the most used and longest lasting product. On boating forums, 3M 5200 was the go-to product for strength and longevity in a tough marine environment. Hope this helps.

I worked for 15 years in a boatyard.  5200 is one of the most hated products by the people who work on boats.  Owners in their ignorance use for all sorts of sealing jobs.  The people I worked with had no idea where 52oo was the preferred sealant.  It's actually a stupidly strong adhesive and that is all.

The stuff will usually fail in one small part of the application and cause a leak.  Unfortunately. the rest of the application grips so hard it will pull everything around it apart as you try to break the bond.  In the end you have a bigger mess than what you started with after a lot of time fighting that crap.  Even if you can get the stuff apart it's almost impossible to remove the residue.

To get around the complaints about that stuff, 3M started selling a bond release for 5200.  With lots of caveats on the proper application of the bond release they were covered when it didn't work.  A total waste of time and money. 

My advice is to avoid 5200 any place you have even the most remote chance of having to disassemble.

I used to repair punctures in tubeless tyres with a piece of tube as a patch, stuck on with roof plumbers silicone (it's cheap so you don't have to skimp with it if you're going the whole way around) and pump the air in straight away. 

My brick has the break away connections top and bottom. It's a good idea that the protector bars break before the sump breaks or the frame bends. At least in Victoria, and at least in the near past, I'd rather have the sump break, cause even a small bend in the frame where the protection bars mount would make it unfit for registration, and they used to look at those points, possibly still do. It's much easier to bolt a new sump on.

Re 3M 5200: It is almost universally accepted that the stuff is diabolical to remove, so regard it as a permanent application, not a repeat service application. 
Most user reports of failure, such as failure to maintain seal or leaking, seem to come down to poor surface preparation and/and poor product application. This applies to the failure of many products. 
Generally I have found 3M specialist products to be very high quality (I have no commercial affiliation to 3M). Given some reservations expressed about 5200, what would be a superior product for me to use in sealing the spoke/nipple indents in my spoked wheel tubed to tubeless conversion (I will be using 3M 4412N tape in the wheel well). Thanks.

Have you checked YouTube?  I recall seeing several videos showing how others have sealed their spokes to go with tubeless tires.

jjefferies wrote:Well I've ordered a full set of the soft things (they refer to them as sandwich's)  from Duck's source. So for a moment that'll take care of things. But going forward my concern is not to break the engine case and the lower two connections seem to me to be relatively fragile. So the Police version seems interesting.

Those 'bars are solidly mounted at the top and have the breakaway mounts at the bottom. I definately like the way that the impact loads are distributed across the crashbars, frame and engine cases on both sides.

@daveyson: it's just my opinion that if you hit something hard enough to bend the frame with the crashbars mounted solidly at the top, the bike will be a write-off anyway. Just my opinion and nothing more.

jjefferies wrote:So the Police version seems interesting.

That's about all it is. You're more likely to encounter a crowd of pre-teen YouTubers asking for selfies with you, j, than find police-style Brick crashbars for your K75 in North America. I've seen only two for sale in 12 years; one of those didn't have mounting hardware.

I've got a Staffa pipe and tube bender for sale...

Laitch wrote:

jjefferies wrote:So the Police version seems interesting.

That's about all it is. You're more likely to encounter a crowd of pre-teen YouTubers asking for selfies with you, j, than find police-style Brick crashbars for your K75 in North America. I've seen only two for sale in 12 years; one of those didn't have mounting hardware.

But with Dai's "I've got a Staffa pipe and tube bender for sale"?

How hard would it be to construct them? Just looking at the photos mind you.
Pre-teen's?? howzabout some of them post teens?

Looking at the photos it's not real obvious of the mounting points. There are two bolts in the front of the lower but I don't see what they connect to. The the lowers sweep back to connect to?  Each Other? Just wondering. If they worked for a K75 it probably work for a k100 as well.
J.

Dai wrote:
@daveyson: it's just my opinion that if you hit something hard enough to bend the frame with the crashbars mounted solidly at the top, the bike will be a write-off anyway. Just my opinion and nothing more.

Agree, good point, just something I used to look out for when looking at used bike sales.

Here's one that came off one of my bricks, the previous owner adapted it from a boxer.

This is a good reminder of how incredibly unsymmetrical bricks are.

If you like sticking your feet out into the wind on highway pegs, you can do it on a brick too.

I just dropped both of those pics into Photoshop and had a good look. Contrary to my initial opinion, all three mounting points stilll use the breakaway mountings. The crashbars are a two-part fitting where the leftside slides into the right. The loop underneath at the front is unsupported and can be classified more as a bashplate (bashloop?) than anything else. The two bolts at the front of the loop hold the two halves together; the angle of the pic gives the impression that they're attached to something else but they're not. Not having a K75, I'm guessing that switching from tube to flatbar to cross the rear of the engine was to avoid the exhaust system. There is a welded bracket on the flat bar that connects to the rear breakaway. Based purely on the size of the nuts (13mmAF) I'd guess that the flatbar is 25mm x 5mm and the tube is 25mmOD.

In the event of a hard smackdown, it's my opinion that the entire cage would just break away from the engine. Being a police setup, it's highly likely that it was designed to carry spotlights and blues'n'twos and to prevent the bike from rolling over if it was dropped at low speed. The bashloop wouldn't do much more than protect the engine from a high kerb at slow speed.

Dai wrote:bashloop 

I'm confused. Is there an English translation for this word?  

duck wrote:

Dai wrote:bashloop 

I'm confused. Is there an English translation for this word?  

I'm taking the piss in making up a word because it's tubing and not the normal flat metal bashplate.

jjefferies wrote:Pre-teen's?? howzabout some of them post teens?

Pre-teens could possibly want a selfie with somebody who looks like Santa, a Smurf or Gandalf, so use of that term indicated there's still a scant possibility of your finding police crash bars if you search the Web every day for the next 12 years. Approach by post-teens—for somebody in your cohort—could be a pre-crime indicator rather than benign selfie-seeking.

Anyway, here are some views of the parts involved, if anybody is still interested.

Thanks Laitch. Smartass here nearly had it right then!

Laitch said: Anyway, here are some views of the parts involved, if anybody is still interested.

Oh, very interested. downloaded all. And maybe trying to reproduce them at some point. If my bod allows.

thanks very interesting.

Next project is to paint the backup fairing and replace the broken parts. A major issue is that California's environmental laws don't allow use of the same paints. And a 10 oz spray can of "similar" color paint is USD $35. I know I'm getting old when a rattle can paint job costs $35./can.

J.

jjefferies wrote:So my Red K75, 166,656 miles, seen in my picture needed some riding. First time out in a few months, aside: I'd been using Silver with only 66,000 miles. When I found that Red's speedometer wasn't working, took it home and took the instrument pod apart to clean the contacts. In the process I noted that one of the four 6mm bolts holding it on, had dropped out of the right side. I figured that it had fallen  off somewhere in the previous 10K miles. In another post I described the project and that it wasn't the instrument pod but a connector under the right battery cover that was the actual cause of the speedo failure. Now Red was back together and I took it out for a short ride to check that all was good. So I rode out to Alameda Point, the old naval air station situated on the west end of the island directly across the bay from San Francisco. Putzed around looking at the various changes/projects going on to convert the area to civilian usage when I came down closed off road. Well it really wasn't closed off that well, just some of those moveable water fill able barriers that any bike can go around/through. But as there were workmen around and I felt compelled to be a nice guy and not violate the signs about the road closure. I wheeled around to the left to go back up the way I came when the unthinkable happened. From what I later deduced, the bike's forks didn't turn fully, the clutch was slightly jumpy and I was caught over balanced and dumped. Going down I felt my left knee and ankle take a hit. Instinctively I hit the kill switch and after a moment  started to pick myself up. Now the embarrassing part. I've dropped bikes before. Not terribly often but it happens. But this was right in front of the Point's fire station. Before I even could pick myself up there were a dozen young virile manly fellows, doubt any of them were over 30, there to give me a hand up and righting the bike. As politely as a shaken old duffer can, I declined their offers of further help and managed to ride home (<15 minutes) before the adrenaline wore off. Once home and needing to park the bike back in the garage, I ride down the driveway past the house, take a hard left, stop, and then roll the bike backwards in a hard right into the garage. But the hard left wasn't that hard. In fact any left turn more than you would do in normal riding was blocked. For various reasons this had not been obvious previously in normal riding. So I went in the house and began the recovery business with icing of my left side knee and ankle, talked to a online nurse, then doctor, went and had x-rays made. Nothing broken just some painful bruising. At 78 bruising is always painful. Next day, went out to examine the bike. Left side case saver had torn free, breaking a bit of the fairing. And the fairing itself has a nasty break at the top front of the left side piece. Not that big an issue as I have another full fairing that after painting can be popped onto the bike. But examination of the forks and triple clamps found "AH So" that 6mm bolt that I mentioned having been lost from the instrument pod. It had landed on the lower brace and interposed itself between the brace and the fork stop. Hence the issues with hard left turn which is what I think took me down. Mentioned to the young ladies living next door that any fem's interested in prime males on the hoof might care to have bicycle problems in that particular locale.

Now the query for suggestions. The case savers if you have ever had reason to examine them are mounted at three points with cups filled with a rubber compound with a bolt coming out of the cup. I will attach a photo of the top mount. Anyway at all three mounts the bolts pulled free of the rubber mounting compound.  I spoke with the proprietor of Smith & Company about obtaining some of the old rubber sulfide two part epoxy that they sold for years and was told that basically due to California's environmental laws coupled with manufacturers reorgs it was no longer available. That stuff was fantastic. He recommended 5200 Fast by 3M which I know nothing about. And so would like to ask of the assembled riders/mechanics if anyone has other suggestions or experiences with something to mount the bolts into the cups. I can clean out the old stuff but what to use in its place.
best regards
J.
Photo of the case saver mount

I have 2 NOS ones in my stock.  Let me know if you're interested.

Kr4mo wrote:I have 2 NOS ones in my stock.  Let me know if you're interested.

Thank you very much for the offer. But as I posted I've received 6
of the alternative type that Duck posted a link to. And they look
to be as heavy duty as the originals. I'm sure to have a few extra
myself after the repairs are complete.

best regards
J.Jefferies