Out Your Backdoor: Aero Cars and Motos: Time to Save Gas and Have Fun!
Oh Make Blog! Oh how I love thee! You are almost as hip and sexy as sweet Jes... almost.
Seriously, the Make Blog has a small bit about the above page on Out Your Backdoor, which is about the coolest scooter related page I've stumbled upon in months. It's a long rant on streamlining vehicles for greatly improved gas mileage, with a lot of focus on motorcycles and scooters. Or as the author calls them Motos and FF (for foot forward.) Lots of links, and lots of yummy eye-candy.
A lot of the author's thinking revolves around marrying concepts from recumbinent bicycles to motorized vehicles. He also talks about Craig Vetter quite a bit, who's Harley sportster hacked into a scooter I've ranted about before. Apparently the ingenious Mr. Vetter also makes fiberglass shells for streamlining scooters, enabling a machine that used to get 60 to 80 mpg to easily maximize fuel efficiency to 300 mpg, with the current record (using the Vetter High Mileage Streamlined Fairing) being 477 mpg!
My head is reeling. The Vetter High Mileage Streamlined Fairing weighs 30 lbs as is, though modifications for a particular scoot are necessary, and costs $1300, not including shipping. Now that's a bit steep for the typical bloke out there with just a daily rider, but definitely doable for the obsessed scooterist with a stable of scoots in various states of functionality. If I had a shop and a little more disposable income, I'd certainly be thinking about picking up a $500 early 90's Honda Elite and tweaking it out with one of these. (A visualization of the Vetter fairing on a Helix is below)
Or... better yet, coming up with something of my own...
If any of these ideas or pictures stimulate you, you should really check out the link at the top of this post, I've just scratched the surface of all the cool stuff on there.
Oh Make Blog! Oh how I love thee! You are almost as hip and sexy as sweet Jes... almost.
Seriously, the Make Blog has a small bit about the above page on Out Your Backdoor, which is about the coolest scooter related page I've stumbled upon in months. It's a long rant on streamlining vehicles for greatly improved gas mileage, with a lot of focus on motorcycles and scooters. Or as the author calls them Motos and FF (for foot forward.) Lots of links, and lots of yummy eye-candy.
A lot of the author's thinking revolves around marrying concepts from recumbinent bicycles to motorized vehicles. He also talks about Craig Vetter quite a bit, who's Harley sportster hacked into a scooter I've ranted about before. Apparently the ingenious Mr. Vetter also makes fiberglass shells for streamlining scooters, enabling a machine that used to get 60 to 80 mpg to easily maximize fuel efficiency to 300 mpg, with the current record (using the Vetter High Mileage Streamlined Fairing) being 477 mpg!
My head is reeling. The Vetter High Mileage Streamlined Fairing weighs 30 lbs as is, though modifications for a particular scoot are necessary, and costs $1300, not including shipping. Now that's a bit steep for the typical bloke out there with just a daily rider, but definitely doable for the obsessed scooterist with a stable of scoots in various states of functionality. If I had a shop and a little more disposable income, I'd certainly be thinking about picking up a $500 early 90's Honda Elite and tweaking it out with one of these. (A visualization of the Vetter fairing on a Helix is below)
Or... better yet, coming up with something of my own...
If any of these ideas or pictures stimulate you, you should really check out the link at the top of this post, I've just scratched the surface of all the cool stuff on there.
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1 comment:
Great stuff. Wish I had an old, ratty japanese scoot I could experiment with. Back in my bicycle riding days, I made aerodynamic wheel discs from posterboard and velcro. I was considering the same application of posterboard for fairings, but somehow got sidetracked.
John
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