I see what you mean in these pictures, the angle made an optical illusion. I like the black look. I may have to consider that for the future, as my bike gets dirtier.
I've use JB Weld for lots of temp repairs... remembering it is a temp repair. That said the thermal expansion coefficient of JB compared to aluminium is close but not the same. Nine times out of ten that is why it fails and begins to leak. The colder your bike is the more likely the epoxy will fail after reaching operating temperature.(greater expansion) If the parts would not cool and heat up the epoxy would last a long long time. Nothing beats welding aluminium with aluminium... period... except a brand new OEM cover.
I actually like steel shifters like that as the will fold and can be bent back. A strong aluminum one will more stress on the shaft and not be able to be bent back.
Really? Not sure about that. I would have thought differently. I know you are right on the alloy MSR ones. They will bend once and snap if you try to straiten. The BMW alloy ones can take a good amount of tweaking. I think I actually have a steel folding one I grabbed as a spare that someone mentioned somewhere in a thread. Might have to look into switching and keeping alloy one as a spare.
I was looking at the touratek one and I'm not sure if that's the way to go. The adjustable lenth is nice, and mine really need to get out there more, but the fastening hardware and overlap edges give me the heebie jeebies after this. Probably cut and section in a piece on the stocker. I'll look for a folding end to go on it.
No, that would be a die grinder with an 80 grit disk on it. Turns it into a one minute job. I will more than likely do the same thing on my new cover whenever it happens to stumble to my front door.
Not sure where you live but be careful with uncoated aluminum exposed to environments with high salt (near coast, salted winter roads in the mountains. etc.) as even it corrodes rather quickly. Might be a good idea to follow the grinding session with a good couple coates of clear (now comes in gloss, satin, flat, etc.). I'm digging the look and might have to do it myself
