Well, my little project of making wind deflectors for my Glee went smoothly. It's almost over but the most important part, testing, has run well and left me happy as I've achived what I was hoping for.
True to be said, I was a lot sceptical about the success. First, I got lexan, cut it as per mold I've made, did all of the bending and then left everything alone. Riding every day, I'd put my hand on the area deflectors were to cover and nothing happened. Everything was the same.
So, I left everything alone for a while. Then rain and storm came. For 7 days my Glee hasn't laft garage. This morning, the day off, just took all of the bits to run a little test as it was nice sunny day. Mounted the bits, without a lot of care. As I said, it was just for a test.
Started my spin. Slower streets leaving my home, nothing to notice.
Now, I have Givi Airflow and the ideia about these deflectors is from other forum, from people also using Givi Airflow. My Givi Airflow took away 90% of buffeting but I wanted to take care of those reamining 10%. All of the Givi Airflow owners could swear to results.
Arrived in faster streets, those that I ride every day on my way to work. Still nothing to note here and I thought I'd start rising my speed to look for buffeting moment. Gave a quick look at my speedo and was suprised that I was going already 20 km/h more then I would go every day at that area. No buffeting.
Before, first sign of buffeting would show up at 100 km/h but was so little that I just kept the same body position. Hardly noticed the buffeting. Then, at 120 km/h buffeting would rise, but still not much to make me do anything. Only if I was to ride 1-2 hours at that speed, I'd duck a bit to avoid it. But for short run, nothing to worry about. Then 135 km/h, I had to duck as buffeting would become dangerous.
All of this data is strange if don't mention that I'm 6"2.5'. Just a bit smaller riders have almost zero buffeting with Givi Airflow. Rising the screen makes no difference as Givi Airflow is the type of the screen that functions by "air compressing box" located between two screens. But, this is not the thread about the screen, so I'll leave it here.
Today is nice sunny day here. Temperature reading 17ºC. I thought, the hell with testing it like this, lets go to motorway. The idea was to slowly keep on rising the speed untill I hit the buffeting speed, and all of that while keeping my upper body straight up. There was some cross wind so I decided to go only untill I feel safe. And there I went, to 160 km/h, and nothing. Upper body straight and no buffeting at all.
So, I officially declare: the buffeting has been defeated !!!!!!!
I didn't go over 160 km/h, it wasn't safe and I don't need that speed. If I did, I'd ride sports bike, not the Glee.
Now, a little retrospective on construction, as there may be someone interested in doing the same:
First, I made a mold by bending long piece of wire. After it's been done, I flattened it and transfered to a piece of the cardboard. Here it is, in case you need it. I put it on the top of the piece of paper so you can simply import the photo in Word or any other writing or graphic software, choose A4 as your working page layout and adjust the photo to align the borders between my page and yours, then you'll have exact size for your own mold. One more notice, lines drawn on the mold cardboard are areas to heat up and bend:
On the next photo you can see them cut and bent, beside the mold. It wasn't easy. I cut the lexan with electrical saw, that was easy, sanded the edges down, easy again, and then started bending with industrial heater. The left one went out great on the first try but the right one only at the third attempt. Every time I'd heat it up enough to bend, it'd start blistering and a lot. Final piece had right shape but looked horrible. Only the third one went well. The reason was not having enough patience to heat the lexan slowly.
Here it is, installed, 3 rubber washers bellow each bolt:
As it's all good now, next step is to buy some better screws, make rubber edging on the lexan (as the one on our helmets), sand it down a bit more... just to make things look better. What you see on the photos was just for testing purposes.
I'm glad I bought twice the lexan I needed. I almost used it all.
I mentioned above, 17ºC and sunshine. Well, when the day is sunny here, it's very hot if you're standing on the sunshine, any time of the year. I'm mentioning this to call attention that at 160 km/h and all of the vents (4 of them) open on my helmet, I started to sweat and had to crack open the visor. I can imagine in the summer...
That leads me to my other project. I want to make ventilation behind the screen. At this point, I have some wind noise because of negative pressure behind the screen. If I install right tubing (hidden) and bring the fresh air behind the screen, I may defeat that negative pressure (the source of noise) and even direct that air to the helmet to get some fresh (non turbulent) air. At this point, the ideia is just for negative pressure, we'll see later about directing it to the helmet. I'm going to do it, take some photos along the process and then test it. I already have all material I need (€8 spent). If it makes a difference in air pressure behind the screen, I'll make a thread and explain it. If I go quit, it didn't work.
At the end, I have no idea if this would work using any screen on Glee or just Givi Airflow. I've done my tests using Givi Airflow.
EDIT FEB 19 - Upload photos of finished deflectors:Here are photos of finished deflectors. I've put rubber edging all arround it, as it touches black plastic fairing on two spots, and without the rubber it would leave a mark by time on the plastic. As the bolt is tighten, deflector should sit firmly against the fairing on it's oposite end (oposite from the bolt area). That is a sign that bending was OK. If it leaves some space and doesn't touch the fairing, then you need to bend few mm more that little bending area (smaller line on the mold). As you already understood, that little area is bent oposite way of the big area bent.
Let's start with this photo, where I marked areas where deflectors should sit firmly against the fairing. They don't need to have the same kind of edging I used, it can be any kind of adhesive piece of rubber, for example the one used on kitchen furniture doors, little self-adhesive round transparent rubbers, put just on the areas where deflector touches the fairing:
Here are other photos, various angles. The bolts are still temporary, as I'm waiting for better looking ones:
