After polishing and admiring my shiny cases I did what every sane person would do "Hey I,m going to drill holes in them".
I've seen this done on other bikes and like the look of it. There seems to be two ways that people do this 1) Randomly dill holes where ever there is a space (AARG WHY?)
2) Space the holes out evenly across the case
I'm more of the second type but I was worried about drilling through the webbing on the back.
I wouldn't worry if it was just a cover but this also has the clutch actuating mechanism. I didn't want to weaken it so I stuck to just the end of the cover and avoided all the webbing.
In order to mark where the webbing was on the front I made this tool from a coat hanger, some duct tape and a sharpie.
By running the wire end along the side of the webbing a corresponding mark was made on the front. After that i just used a ruler to clean up the lines.
I decided to drill 3/8" holes as that was the largest bit I had at the time. I then drew several lines 3/8" apart in a checker board pattern. I drew a X in ever second square to mark where I would drill the hole.
I took the cover to my father in laws as he has a drill press. We put a large bolt in a vice facing up. The cover was held over the bolt under the spot where the center punch was used for each hole.
A 3/32" pilot hole was then drilled
Followed by a 1/4" hole. At this point I realized that the bottom holes near the shifter were getting close to the webbing so the decision was made to leave them at 1/4".
The rest were drilled out to the final 3/8".