How to Go 200 MPH with a Stock Kawi Engine
Streamlined motorcycles at last year's Vintage Motorcycle Days. That raggedy-looking green bike is Vic Valdes, who made his streamlining out of discarded political posters.
I spoke with Craig Vetter last week, working on an article that I hope I’m not too late getting to Rider magazine. Vetter, as you probably know, is the designer of the Windjammer fairing and a lot of other things, and these days he’s really focused on fuel efficiency.
Vetter has worked out the design for what he calls The Last Vetter Fairing, which is body work that creates a streamlined motorcycle with upright seating and room to carry four bags of groceries.
He told me that in a recent test ride, with two identical motorcycles, one streamlined, the one that was streamlined got double the gas mileage of the stock bike. But he also talked about the power you need to push a bike down the road at 70 mph, and that comes out somewhere in the 20-25 horsepower range.
And here’s the kicker. If you’ve got too much power you’re not going to see any major miles per gallon increase with streamlining, he said, because all that power eats up too much gas.
“What you would notice is you could go probably 200 miles an hour. But where is it legal to go 200 miles an hour?”
I get the point but it still kind of tickles my fancy to think of my Concours going that fast. “I hit 189 miles an hour but the dang thing only gave me 68 miles to the gallon! What a gas hog!”
So anyway, it was a really good conversation and I couldn’t begin to use all the interesting stuff in that one short article for Rider so all the extra will make for some good blog posts here. Stay tuned.
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July 4th, 2013 at 6:02 pm
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