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Just wrote an article about fairings
Hi Sentraguy,
I just wrote about this . Here is a partial quote from the article:
"There are three primary factors that determine the amount of drag from roof rack components: speed, frontal area and drag coefficient. How fast you drive is up to you, but clearly the frontal area of a fairing is substantially larger than that of a set of crossbars. In fact, it is probably in the neighborhood or 5 or 6 times the frontal area or even more. Further, the drag coefficient for the triangular shape made by a fairing is likely to range from 30% to 225% higher than typical square and round crossbars.
The aerodynamic drag is calculated, in part, by multiplying the frontal area by the drag coefficient. Clearly, the drag produced by a fairing will be substantially higher than that of the crossbars by themselves."
Almost without a doubt, wind noise will be reduced, but your mileage cannot improve and will likely drop farther by using a fairing. The best options are to get your attachments off the crossbars and, even better, buy aerodynamic crossbars or take them off altogether when not in use.
Tom
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