frontal protection

Anyone ever consider removing front engine cradle and covering with rubberized undercoating? Mine starting to chip. Also thinking about coating the skid plate and may cut down on some noise.

I thought about doing the skid plate, but I haven't yet. Too lazy with the good weather to stop riding lol

I have a Moose Racing skid plate, and tried the bedliner coating. I've tried a couple different things to counter the reflected noise. What I discovered was, using the closed cell foam door self adhesive seal on the plate helped the most, but it doesn't eliminate the noise. I found that the rear of the skid plate touching the frame welds right at the rear of the plate were the worst offenders. Insulating those points helped a bunch, but is still noisier than stock. I have a new Acerbis plastic plate for the WR250F that I'm going to heat gun a bit to make work. It's not far off, just needs a little massaging. Take a look at Rick Ramsey's website to see how it looks. I'm sure it won't reflect as much noise. The Moose and Flatlander plates are just noisy.

I rubber mounted mine from day one. No noise from rubbing but don't know, guess I'm bored and looking for something to do to my bike. Been a long winter and haven't got to ride yet. Maybe Sat supposed to be warm and snow off the roads now. Last ride was in October.

I was getting a buzz at highway speeds that turned out to be the skid plate touching the frame welds initially. The welds stick down a bit, and when the skid plate was tightened up even with foam on the frame rails, the rear of the plate would juuuuusst touch the frame welds and vibrate against them. Putting another piece of foam directly under the welds cured that. The mechanical noise of the engine is just nicely reflected back at the rider up the front of the metal skid plate and up the steering head between the wings of the front plastic. Take the plate off, and it's a remarkably quiet bike.

I do 30 minute to 90 minute runs on slab sometimes, and it's just annoying even though I know it's not a functional issue. On a dirt only bike, wouldn't even be a factor offroad. It's just the sustained noise at 75 MPH on the highway that bothers me.

Once I get our garage/shop back in some semblance of order I'll take a day on the weekend to modify the Acerbis skid plate and take a good long ride on the bike. Trying to find a good compromise between protection and noise.

Back to the O.P. If the paint is chipping, I'd just take it off and powder coat it. Using plasti-dip would work, but no idea of the durability of it.