Lower fairing brittle plastic question

[DucatiNoob]

I took the fairings off on the weekend and gave them a good clean inside & out, also ripped out the disintigrating firewall/material ifrom the middle portion of the fairings (not too concerned about that, should I be?). What does concern me is that of the 4 closures with bolts for the bottom seam of the fairing, the plastic O shaped ring for the front bolt of each set of 2 was brittle and basically fell off when I unscrewed the fairing. Considering the back of it sits about 2cm from the rear tyre and its now only fastened with 2 bolts, 1 front, 1 rear I'm a little worried it might break & rub on the tyre or something & have been considering replacing them. Then I looked up prices and saw each half would be about $500 (so $1000) from commoto by part # so have been thinking of sharkskins & getting the street top & bottom. I'm wondering if any of you other new shape SS owners have had problems like this & how you solved them?

Also, quick noob question of the day: cleaned & lubed my chain... then went out for a ride today, found chain lube on the side of the tyre where the chain is. Have given it a wash & scrub on the tyre to try get it out, but it seems there is still some residue there. Should I be overly concerned about this? What should I do about it?

[Joe-B]

I'd reinforce it with a fiberglass layer on the inside before I replaced the fairing. Wipe the tire off with alcohol (or xylene if you want something stronger) to remove chain lube. Chains do not require much lube, so go easy next time you lube it, and wipe the chain down before you ride.