Dennis in NH
Well-known member
It was pretty hot here in NH this weekend (about 52F ) and I figured I'd give this a try. It was really fun. There's something about riding and not seeing a windshield in front of you (even below eye level). For some reason, I don't feel like I'm leaning all that far without the windshield. Apparently, the lines of the windshield give me some sort of reference point that the bike is tilted. I also feel the bike has less resistance when accelerating (maybe just all in my head).
I didn't ride at highway speed but under say 50mph but it was fun. I remember the wind pushing me back and was glad to be wearing my full face helmet.
So any reason not to ride without a windshield? i.e., any weird consequences besides the usual bugs, fatigue, etc.
This time of year, there are few bugs and after a while, you learn to get used to the wind pushing you back -- not to mention, I really like standing on the pegs while cruising around (to see over walls and stuff ).
The only thing I did (due to lack of better solution and temporary nature of the experiment) was to remove the windshield and reinstall the W shaped plate and added some masking tape to keep things from vibrating and rattling.
Anyway, the reason I went without windshield was my Two Brothers pipes seemed very bassy loud. I theorized that the bass was just bouncing off my big Vstream windshield and hitting me in the head causing some interior helmet buzz. I got aftermarket pipes on an FZ6 (small windshield with Scorpions) one time and it sounded good. I got an aftermarket pipe for my Vstar 1300 (with big windshield) and I got the same bass loudness. I figured that if there's no windshield to bounce the bass, it will seem better. And it was. The other problem was I needed new earplugs.
Anyway, I found riding without windshield really fun and really considering a really short windshield at some point for the Summer days.
Dennis
I didn't ride at highway speed but under say 50mph but it was fun. I remember the wind pushing me back and was glad to be wearing my full face helmet.
So any reason not to ride without a windshield? i.e., any weird consequences besides the usual bugs, fatigue, etc.
This time of year, there are few bugs and after a while, you learn to get used to the wind pushing you back -- not to mention, I really like standing on the pegs while cruising around (to see over walls and stuff ).
The only thing I did (due to lack of better solution and temporary nature of the experiment) was to remove the windshield and reinstall the W shaped plate and added some masking tape to keep things from vibrating and rattling.
Anyway, the reason I went without windshield was my Two Brothers pipes seemed very bassy loud. I theorized that the bass was just bouncing off my big Vstream windshield and hitting me in the head causing some interior helmet buzz. I got aftermarket pipes on an FZ6 (small windshield with Scorpions) one time and it sounded good. I got an aftermarket pipe for my Vstar 1300 (with big windshield) and I got the same bass loudness. I figured that if there's no windshield to bounce the bass, it will seem better. And it was. The other problem was I needed new earplugs.
Anyway, I found riding without windshield really fun and really considering a really short windshield at some point for the Summer days.
Dennis