The Wild Geese

The Gizmo G S With Wind Deflectors
Poor man's popemobile
(click for larger photos)

My GS, as shown above, has been through a gradual metamorphosis to reach the format seen here. First, to combat the infamous GS wind buffeting the standard screen was replaced with a taller and wider one from Givi. This was a definite improvement, but was followed by the addition of Tobinators to raise the screen and increase the air gap under the front - by allowing more air behind the screen the buffeting caused by air curling around the screen is reduced. The higher screen could also be set to a flatter angle for the same height at the top, further improving the smoothness of the air flow.

On a separate mission, to improve the GS' abysmal standard lighting, I made a mounting bar from some aluminium bar and added driving lights just below the 'beak'. These are angled to throw light wide and short, and they throw a lot of light on the road immediately ahead.

So far so good, but on a long trip (8,000 km to Darwin and back over two weeks), it became clear that further mods were needed to create a quiet space when ducking down behind the screen. To this end, and sparing no expense, both ends were removed from a beans can left over from one campsite evening meal, which was then cut vertically into two. The two pieces were fixed to the screen mounting points so that they curved outwards forming wind deflectors for the lowest part of the screen. This worked better than it looked and provided a pocket of still air when ducking down behind the screen. As a result I spent a fair bit of the trip leaning forward with one arm on the tank, hiding from the wind.

I recently helped a friend make replacement wind deflectors for his Gold Wing, and it set me to thinking about using something similar on the GS. Using perspex left over from his project I formed the deflectors shown above, and made up a pair of brackets which I mounted to the lights bar at the bottom and to the screen mountings at the top. I am still getting used to the look, and considering tinting them to disguise the mounting hardware, but the bottom line is that wind and rain protection is much improved. My Nolan helmets (a flip-front and an open-face), are not the quietest around, and I have recently bought a BMW sportintegral full-face in my quest for peace and quiet, but even with the Nolans wind noise is much reduced. I can actually hear the very quiet motor purring along at 110 km/hour, which is a first. I am looking forward to trying this setup with the BMW helmet.

I had an 800 km day on Sunday when I rode from the Sunshine Coast to the Gold Coast for the day to take part in the Cassie Doyle Leukaemia Ride. The weather was less than friendly and I can report that I stayed a lot drier with the wind deflectors acting as good rain deflectors too. I still get plenty of wind from the knees down so that area got wet, but the seat (and more importantly, my seat), stayed perfectly dry.

The Cassie Doyle ride was the first outing for the wind deflectors, having made them in a few hours the day before. Since then they have proved their worth on many trips. They have recently (Sep 2005), been upgraded after a spill left one of them broken off at the top. The new ones extend further down and provide even more protection.

-- Gizmo