The Post That Never Was

     So I got a skid plate installed on my dad's WRR and man was the thing loud.  Had this vibration at certain RPM's that made your fillings hurt.  I concluded that this was due to a large unsupported surface area on the Flatlands Racing plate where the skid rested against the frame rails.  I'm also well aware from my XR experience that having a plate like this will trap water against the frame and cause premature rust.  Well I don't have the vibration issue on the KTM, but I do notice a bit more engine noise with the plate on.  So I figured this would be a good time to conduct a very scientific experiment on dB increases from skid plates and ways to correct them.  I wrote the whole procedure out on here complete with a conclusion that I was sure to have.

...And then I did the test.

     Well apparently while a skid plate does increase the noise level at certain RPM's, at anything more than a crawl these noises are negligible compared to wind and exhaust noise.  I ran the experiment at several different speeds but kept finding that the WRR (the worse of the two) was reading the same dB both with and without the plate.  So why did my fillings say differently?  The only conclusion I can come up with is that its more of an issue with the frequency of the sound than the loudness.

      So to deal with the vibration noise as well as the rust issue, I went through with my plan of sticking 8 rectangles of 1/4" neoprene gasket material to the plate at various locations between the frame and skid.  Vibration noise gone and water now drains.  Yay?