Carbon fibre isn’t plastic, completely different material at a molecular level, check out the latest F1races to see how flexible it isn’t
It's not plastic, its a genuine DP carbon fibre part. To top it off, my little used bike (3400 miles) started the bloody fuel sender error nonsense
Dreadful. I live a mile up a dirt track, in the sunny Scottish Highlands. Left the guard off after adjusting the chain. Never again...
A massive word of warning if you're considering, or are already, not using the crud catcher. This is from first hand experience. Firstly, not having the crud catcher in the rain will put road spray all up your back. Having a top box helps avoid that to some extent but if you commute or tour then you want that abomination in place. Yes, I agree it looks ugly and I took the one off my DVT, which leads me to my MUCH more important observation. The crud catcher performs more than one function and it's an essential part of your chain guard. It is possible that a future MOT tester could interpret it's absence as an MOT failure. I removed my crud catcher on my DVT. Yes, I thought it was ugly and a royal pain to keep taking off in order to get to the swingarm pinch bolts whenever I wanted to adjust my chain, so I left it off. Within the last month of DVT ownership and nearly 19,000 miles on the OE chain, after a routine chain adjustment and lubrication I noticed some fairly tight links and decided it was time I replaced the chain. It still seemed fine but I ordered a spanking new DID X-ring from my local dealer and rode over to collect it, when half way into my very short trip there was a sudden and total loss of drive. No big bang or the sound of a metallic snap or other drama or anything like that, but the chain was no longer on the bike - gone completely and I guess lying in the road somewhere, assuming it hadn't flung off and hit another vehicle. On inspection, the chain departing from the bike had broken the top part of the chain guard as that part on it's own is dead flimsy. It had been flung upwards, leaving small gouges on the underside of the tail of the bike right where the pillion sits, and on it's way there it took HUGE gouges out of the pillion foot rest. If my wife had been on the bike with me at the time, I'm certain she would have sustain an injury somewhere around her left foot, ankle, lower leg or thigh. I replaced the foot peg hanger as it was properly mangled but thankfully the rest of the damage was very minor. I might still have the footrest hanger, if so I'll take some pics and share - it will be enough to make you reinstall it, I promise. It was pretty scary. Just a word of warning.
Iirc aircon and a few others have had the same. The fact you have a large scuff and this would suggest maybe a thick branch has been rub over, caught in the carbon shield and damaged both. Seeing others experience is why mine is standard, and why in the summer I’ll take it off
My crud catcher is no more. I removed it and cut the two parts leading to the rear, this left me to grind down the original chain guard which left two holes where the catcher mounted. I plastic welded this up and smoothed it down and used some modelling filler as well until it was really smooth. I then hydrodipped it with carbon fibre film and gloss lacquer on top. See attached pic and it tidies the back end up nicely.
My last multi had the crud catcher fitted and as I've written on here before, my chain snapped on that bike, it wrecked the swing arm, all plastics and took a chunk of crank case on the way out. So I don't think the crud catcher will stop a flinging chain if it's flinging in a direction that's inconvenient. My advice, lose the oem chain as they are shit, I've just put a DID ZVM-X on this multi and the quality far exceeds the oem As for spray, if you use a tail tidy, you're gonna get wet, use the standard guard with smallish plate as I do above, back seat gets a bit damp but I've never found it too bad on the riders seat and not got very wet at all. Hope this helps.
