The Wild Geese

Steves Beast
First registered in 2002, and acquired by me in January 2012 with 88,000km on the clock. Here are a couple of photos just after buying the bike:

The BeaST is one of the first of the 1300's and came with a manually adjusted windscreen, shown above in one of its two available positions. I found this screen height a bit irritating as the top of the screen was right on my line of sight so I experimented with the mountings and rode for a while with the screen mounts inverted, which lowered the screen a bit. I also adjusted things so that the screen angle better followed the lines of the bike to give cleaner airflow. This worked well, although I found the wind noise a bit excessive.

Those who know me from the days of The Gizmo G S With Wind Deflectors will not be surprised to hear that I ordered an electric screen kit from the UK and fitted it at the beginning of February. Screen go up, screen go down.... (and repeat indefinitely).



I had a throttle lock on my last two KTM's and I missed it on the beaST, so I promptly fixed that problem with a home made lock which works by jamming the rubber grip against the twistgrip body - I leave it to you to spot the cleaning brush from a set of electric clippers in the photos below.

This setup worked quite well until I replaced the standard ST grips with nice soft Ducati ones. The new ones were unfortunately too flexible to provide friction against the 'lock', so this particular contraption had to be retired for now.



A couple of months into my ownership and the ST personalisation continues. The wind and weather protection on the standard ST is already very good, but I wanted very, very good. So... I acquired a V-Stream screen from an Australian supplier, which was very promptly delivered and installed that same morning in time for the day's Any Thursday ride. Suffice to say: a fantastic screen. I installed it in the upper of the two available positions which keeps it at a reasonably shallow angle even when raised. This gives very smooth airflow with little turbulence around the helmet. The screen is clear and optically very good so looking through it was not an issue - something I usually find irritating on a bike.

That first ride with the V-Stream was solo. On later rides pillion Noi reported some turbulence at all screen settings, which was disappointing. I was fairly sure the screen was not the direct culprit and from scouring the internet I guessed that airflow coming under the mirrors was sweeping up to helmet level for the pillion. Time for another mod! I made the deflectors shown below and mounted them using industrial-strength velcro. No need to point out the rather ragged looking edges, all I had to hand for cutting the perspex was a router. Still, they serve their purpose brilliantly - we now both ride in a nice quiet pocket of turbulence-free air, with just enough breeze to keep us from overheating. This setup will do nicely for a while...