Fabricating a Fairing

bairdco said:
Me and Dale live a few blocks from each other. I think Neil lives under a bridge or in a cave somewhere farther north. From my house, Newland St is a good route. Big bike lane and minimal traffic.

And yeah, it's early. Cars start clearing out at 8ish.
Click to expand...
Actually in a storm water drain. Very palatial with running water and sewer.

Come down Dale which turns into Newland after briefly jogging East on Garden Grove Blvd.
Dale is the next light East of Beach.
I may ride north to meet you on Dale.
 
Well my fairing is race tested now and it didn’t work out very well. I laid it over on my second ever lap riding at apex. I then laid it over 2 more times, one during practice, and one during the first heat.

I think I built the fairing body too far towards my knees when riding. In a regular position the edge of the fairing is 3 or so inches in front of my knees, but when I went to lean into a turn, I couldn’t put my leg/knee where I wanted to on the low side.

So I was not getting enough weight on the front tire, and the front tire would wash out. Although I also slid out my rear tire on the final crash. I already put two holes in my brand new leathers and scraped the **** out of one knee skid. I’ve got some sewing/patching to do.

I had a hard time getting used to apex raceway. It’s much smaller and tighter than it looks on video. I could not even reach max rpm of 6,200 or so on the straights, so the fairing probably didn’t help too much with speed either.

I think I will try to cut the fairing back, but I can only go to the frame line. Which is about 3 -4” inside of the existing outline.

I also surprisingly scraped the bottom of the fairing near the bottom mounts on a couple of extra-leaning left hand turns. I might have to also look into reshaping the bottom curve of the fairing as it reaches down to the lower mount.. I don’t think I’ll have time before the next race on May 11th, so I’ll probably run without the fairing for the next race.
 
It looked to me that the extra weight over the front wheel made it harder to lift the bike up around slower turns. When I was behind you, you had a lot of wobble exiting turns.

But I did take this nice shot of you...
IMG_20190330_095831.jpg
 
Yah, I can’t blame the fairing for all of my sucky riding on Saturday. I could not get used that track! I felt like I had some kind of wobble either going into or coming out of every turn. I don’t think I ever hit that first chicane correctly not even one time.

I also had my tire pressure pretty low to assist in traction, but accelerating out of the turns, my back tire would fllop over as I pulled back upright.

I just raced/rode poorly. The last race, I felt a little more confident, but then my starter cup hit my foot and almost took out Baird. After Baird passed me, I could never catch up again. You were super fast out there.

I don’t know if you care about trophies, but I feel like you deserve to have the one I got. You beat me on every race we ran together, even the unlimited race where I had taken off my restrictor plate. Your bike is quite fast now, kept pulling away from me in the straights. I can bring the trophy with me on the April 12th ride if you want it, you could strap it to your handlebars like Brando in The Wild One.
 
Ha! Thanks! But I don't need it. Kind of lame Neil didn't give me one because my bike isn't "unlimited," or at least give me some credit for coming in second, but trophy's just take up space.

I was gaining on the guy from zeda, and probably woulda passed him, but he crashed. I know Scotto probably wasn't riding as fast as he could, since he was so far ahead, but he wasn't gaining any ground on me. Felt good after not even racing the mid-range final. After running great all weekend, my carb decided to clog up on the mid-range warm up lap. : (
 
I stopped by the races Sat. morning for a few hours and I thought that fairing bike was one of the coolest bikes in the pits. And I wouldn't get too disheartened at your results. It's time to refine the design. That's all. Look for ways to reduce friction. Get the gearing right for the track. More HP always helps!. And on and on and on. It never ends.

On a personal note I had a 5 year bout with "stockcar fever" over a dirt track Pinto that started out so badly it's just about hilarious. Picture this. The pack's comin' offa Turn 4 for the start. There's tension in the air and contact between the bumpers. The starter throws the flag! Feet hit the floor!! Everybody takes off .... except for me! LOL! I was already going as fast as I could.

But it was too much fun to stop so I stayed at it and eventually got to where if nothing went wrong I was a top 5 guy outa 20-25 cars. There was one single solitary Main Event win out of something like 65 attempts along the way, but the flukes that had to line up throughout the universe for that to happen is a story that's entirely too long to type up here.

So ya just gotta stay at it. If it can happen to me it can happen to you.

Here's a pic from the night I'll never forget.

Picture 111.jpg
 
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