In my last Can-Am Maverick X3 project update, I told you about everything I'd just done to get it more adventure-ready, including adding Can-Am's Adventure Roof Rack. However, after installing the rack's side plates and taking the Can-Am for a test ride, I quickly found out that the plates vibrated against the rack's tubing. It was a maddening 15-minute ride, one that I prematurely ended, tore home, and quickly removed the plates before heading back out to test all the other mods I'd done.
When I was able to steal some garage time, neither tightening nor loosening did anything to halt the high-pitch resonance. So I stashed the plates on my workbench and just used the Adventure Racks' tubing as my gear attachment points. But in that last update, I mused that fixing the metal-on-metal vibrations would likely become a winter project. Maybe some type of custom gasket could be cut? That'd be fun and it'd provide a great update! But you all, The Drive's commenters, came to my rescue and saved me from overthinking self.
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Slapping me upside the head, commenter GearWhore wrote straight-cut brilliance. "Ace (Hardware) has so many grommets and o-rings (rubber or felt)," they noted, adding,
that you should be able to find plenty of options for the aluminum panel connections." Grommets, O-rings, or rubber washers instead of a gasket? Rubber washers instead of a gasket! Simple, easy, but most of all, cheap as all hell and wouldn't require any tracing or cutting.
I picked up 16 (four per plate) over the weekend at my local Ace Hardware for less than $3 and did a quick test by installing just one plate—I didn't want to install all of them and it not work. But it did! Not a hint of rattling. So simple. So easy. So, so cheap.
A perfect solution that will let me attach whatever I want to the plates, like an axe that now resides on one. But it also highlighted a common issue that occurs with wrenches: overthinking.
Because we know a lot about machines, we tend to go straight for the most complicated issues. Is there a vibration in the front end? Well, that could be a borked axle, a warped brake rotor, or something else in the driveline. Or it could be just that you lost a dang wheel weight. Car won't stay charged after flashing the ECU? Well, that could be a faulty relay, a bad module, or something in the flash itself. It could also just be that you depleted the battery.
Not everything needs a complex fix. Sometimes, all you need are a handful of rubber washers and some awesome commenters to point you in the right direction. Thank you, The Drive commenters!
