The $$$ being thrown around to fix the bike were scary especially when you consider a new bike isn't a whole lot more and I only paid $4500 for it in the first place.
I did take a couple of pics, will post them once I figure out how to do it.
answers to your Qs Gregger....
I didn't drill all the way through, although if you look behind the starter it looks as though there is additional aluminum there but I couldn't tell if it was directly behind the spindle housing. It was drilled about 3/8" deep and 7/32" wide which is slightly smaller than the pin at 15/64 so tight enough to hold the pin in place. We thought about putting some red loctite too, but that might make it harder to get out if I needed to. The same hole size was done on the new cover too, so that size has the normal sleeve for the spindle plus the pin.
I think you could drill and tap it, the aluminum alloy they use appears to be a fairly low grade material - my machinist told me it was like pot metal - so it should be easy to tap with a blind hole tap.
I was thinking the same thing re Devcon/JB Weld or even using high temp adhesive and gluing a sleeve around the outside of the collar. I was disappointed to see the cover had the same sized collar - particularly after the dealer told me the 2006 on models were beefed up in that area. We were going to add some gussets but the welder was concerned about the grade of aluminum he was going to be welding on and thought he might do more damage than good.
I will probably do an early oil change just to check on it all and make sure the pin isn't making a small hole bigger and dropping metal filings into the oil!
Hope this helps
Max
