  R-modes in neutron stars with crusts are damped by viscous friction at the
crust-core boundary. The magnitude of this damping, evaluated by Bildsten and
Ushomirsky (BU) under the assumption of a perfectly rigid crust, sets the
maximum spin frequency for a neutron star spun up by accretion in a Low-Mass
X-ray binary (LMXB). In this paper we explore the mechanical coupling between
the core r-modes and the elastic crust, using a toy model of a constant density
neutron star with a constant shear modulus crust. We find that, at spin
frequencies in excess of ~50 Hz, the r-modes strongly penetrate the crust. This
reduces the relative motion (slippage) between the crust and the core compared
to the rigid crust limit. We therefore revise down, by as much as a factor of
10^2-10^3, the damping rate computed by BU, significantly reducing the maximal
possible spin frequency of neutron star with a solid crust. The dependence of
the crust-core slippage on the spin frequency is complicated, and is very
sensitive to the physical thickness of the crust. If the crust is sufficiently
thick, the curve of the critical spin frequency for the onset of the r-mode
instability becomes multi-valued for some temperatures; this is related to the
avoided crossings between the r-mode and the higher-order torsional modes in
the crust. The critical frequencies are comparable to the observed spins of
neutron stars in LMXBs and millisecond pulsars.
