front sprocket cover screw holes are dirty?

Get a tap. Careful like and make sure you dont cross thread. If you break the tap in there you're literally screwed. Oil the tap and screw in half turn and back quarter out, till you hit the bottom. If the thread is deep occasionally take the tap out and clean the threads.

Yeah clean out with a tap first, brake cleaner & compressed air second and don't put any more copper shit into the holes.

The cover threads are very fragile, I learn't the hard way as one of the overtightened bolts came clean out with the complete thread hanging on the bolt. Haven't bothered with getting the hole helicoiled as the plastic cover is mostly just cosmetic and hangs on with 4 out of 5 bolts just fine.

i ended up sticking it on with 2 of the 5 screws. one in the 11 o clock position and one in the 6 o clock position. feels solid. any problems with doing this? i've ridden the bike about 20 miles, no problems.

After you took the old cover off, did you clean the accumulation of junk out of the area?
I know with mine, a pile of junk builds up in there, and every coupla thousand miles I take the cover off and clean it out. Something I learned many years ago - if you're gonna de-gunk an area around a lot of bolt holes, put bolts in the holes before cleaning. If you did clean this area, you may have washed sandy grime into the bolt holes. Its pretty hard to just wash the holes out. You're gonna have to clean the holes with a tap. Do this carefully, as you can screw up the threads if you're too rough with the tap. Also, try to get a bottom tap - the kind that's flat on the end instead of pointy - the pointy kind probably won't go down fair enough to clean out the hole :horse:

The problem with only two bolts on the cover is you're much more likely to lose it.

Qtips might leave fibers in the hole...Instead get an air can, squirt some Naptha in the hole, cut the Qtip cotton tip, dig out what you can with the modified q-tip carefully, then use the air to force out the Naptha gunk mix....repeat. Works for me everytime and never had issues with it. This may be blasphemy in some else's book....

I recommend cleaning that area every third time you treat your chain...it becomes a source of shit buildup. I also use Naptha to clean my chain...again this may be blasphemy in some else's book...

you know what guys? i ended up getting the original screws back in. the screws that came with the rizoma were about 1/8" longer than the originals and that might have been causing issues...not sure.

i was able to get all 5 originals back in without any problems.

thanks for all of your help.