Looking at the all-encompassing fairings on the popular scooters here got me inspired and I went to the drawing board. However, I got to thinking about the differences between a scooter not meant to really go beyond 50mph most of the time, and a motorcycle that's built to handle highway speeds, which I will need for my daily commute. I currently average about 50mpg in my daily commute to and from work in my Corolla, so the bike I get to do this commute will have to be significantly better in gas mileage.
That leads me to the 250cc class
*. There's definitely some success stories here with those types of bikes. Of those bikes, the fuel-injected CBR250R is the most attractive.
I'm familiar with fabricating fiberglass stuff, so creating a bigger, more thorough fairing would be on my list, but
this article got me thinking, that maybe I shouldn't mess with the aerodynamics. Being aerodynamic in a forward direction probably has no real draw backs for a scooter, but for two wheels at highway speeds, that could possibly spell disaster, if what I'm reading is correct. You'd basically be a sail on wheels.
There's possibly some ingenious ways of getting around this issue, or it's possible that it's not even a real issue. I was looking at all these fully-enclosed, cager-cycles that are in production in Europe, and there's apparently no major issues with crosswinds. If it were as dangerous as the FIM would have us think, there'd already be horror stories about all of these cycles getting in horrible accidents caused by the wind, right?
If I improved arrow dynamics on a bike, I wouldn't be fully enclosed. I would still need to be able to put my feet on the ground like normal; no fancy gadgets to make it stable while at a stop without my own feet.
What do you think?
* 4/21 - After this thread, a lot more planning, and thought, and also after looking more into Allert Jacobs' awesome scooter, I decided my commuter bike will most likely be a scooter; probably the Yamaha Zuma 125. (Too bad the Honda ANF125i Innova is not available in the US Market) It seems to be best route for fuel-economy and speed (for a daily commuter).