Genius or insanity : motorcycle hypermiling

[Hellgate]

I'd rather do a track day on my R6.

[Brian Moffet]

i dont recall anyone asking what you would rather do

Rude much?

[Hartless]

i dont recall anyone asking what you would rather do

Rude much?

well i took the "I would rather" as a statement of un kindliness... i guess maybe i was jumping to conclusions?
and the statement was merely meant to be sarcastic rather than rude. it was just an un needed comment that had no relevance to the thread. sorry :angel:

[artbone]

http://www.parabellum.com/
I met Charlie Perethian when I bought my BMW R1200GS. He runs Parabellum Fairings, located in Dahlonega GA, and has won the Vetter Mileage Challenge many times. I called him about a windshield for my 1200 and he said he hadn't made one yet but if I would bring the bike up he would make me one for free and if I didn't like it he would change it any way I liked. I love a bargain so I took the bike up and about a week later got it back with the new shield. If you look on the above website there is a picture of my bike with the first 1200 GS shield and also a picture of me and the bike at the Arctic Circle.

Charlie is an interesting guy and has a lot of experience both with racing and with hyper mileage events. I tried to get him to make a dustbin fairing for me and he wasn't interested. He said the main problem was that the brakes on most bikes don't work nearly as well when they are fully covered. They heat up more and the bike is so much faster that people get in trouble because they can't stop as fast. When you let off the gas the bike doesn't slow down as fast as you expect. I think maybe he just wasn't interested in the project.

Also on the subject of dustbin fairings; they were outlawed by the FIM after WW2, allegedly for being dangerous in sidewinds, but I've also read that the real reason was that the Brits controlled racing and the FIM back them and they were still using mostly single cylinder engines. The Gernmans and the Italians were building much more powerful multi-cylinder engines that could benefit from the streamlining. The Brits had won the war so they banned the streamlining so their outmoded engines would be competitive for a few more years.

There's always politics.

[Ron_McCoy]

Vic, theree a picture of your bike on the Cycle World forum under Random pictures in the General forum
page 883.

[darkvision]

Hi Ron,   Great  to hear from you and I hope all is well for you and your family. Yes, that's mine. I guess the poster wasn't too impressed.

I haven't posted in a  while on my hypermiling efforts.  I've been working with the Ninja 250  mostly.  I ended up with the third best performance at the 2012 Carmel Vetter Challenge. I was disqualified from official placement  when my bike didn't restart immediately after  a rest stop and the Vetter Challenge official follower passed me. I restarted a moment later and finished the rest of the fast paced ride with an 89 mpg performance. The winning performance was 109 mpg ( Fred Hayes diesel) and second place was 103 mpg  (Alan Smith Vetter-streamlined Ninja 250).   Not bad for its first competition. I got my best tankfill average of 136 mpg on the ride home from Carmel.

Since then I reworked my streamlining package to include a dustbin style front fairing and I'm optimistic that it will help close the gap with my competition. Alan Smith and I will be riding out from the SF Bay Area to the next Vetter Challenge in Ohio ( July 20 ). We will be meeting our fellow Vetter Challenger, Ron Johnston in Cheyenne WY and then ride together to the AMA Vintage Days event. It should be quite an adventure.

The Mid-Ohio Vetter  Challenge looks to be a huge event  with lots of new competitiors as well as lots of electric motorcycles and some bio-diesel cars. Defending Champ Max Perethian and his dad , fuel economy competition legend Charly Perethian will be there as well. It'll be a lot of fun.

Below are some pix of the new  front end .  The Vision is still running great and filled in while the Ninja was getting worked on.