XJ900F temporary legshields for winter use

Behold, the dirtiest XJ9 in the world, right now.
Anyway, to keep me a bit warmer (and hopefully, drier) this winter, I carry on with my winterising of the XJ9, by fitting a pair of temporary legshields.
I tried to keep them relatively slim and unobtrusive, but hey, they're legshields and if they're too slim and unobtrusive they're not going to be of much use.



Testing resumes on Wednesday.

 

Guttering?

 

Nearly - half section of 115mm soil pipe.
Anyway, today I had a chance to get out with it in a kind of damp atmosphere. It wasn't raining, just very moist and plenty of wet roads with other traffic stirring up spray.
They work quite well. There was no wetness on my boots at all, and my legs weren't feeling the cold in the slightest; any spray was diverted around me.
Overall, it's not quite as good as a full touring fairing, but it's good enough to leave it as it is, with some minor tweaking of the screen and legshield length on the right side (I'd accidentally cut that one a couple of inches short, and need to extend it a bit).
Once I've finished tweaking these, I can use them as templates for another set that will be clean cut in one operation.

One thing I did notice was that the original screen and fairing didn't start to properly shield the rider until 90mph was reached. At 95mph, with a slight crouch down, there was a bubble of relatively still air that made high-speed cruising tolerable.
Last week, with the screen extension fitted, the speed necessary for that definitely dropped a bit, but today with the legshields on, I was getting a reasonably fully protected feeling from 80mph. There's still a bit of noise at lower speeds, but oddly, the buffeting I was getting seemed largely absent.
Very odd how airflow changes when taken as a whole.

 

Now that's my kind of modification! I also note the neatly obscured number plate for traffic camera avoidance and the +1 topbox - presumably to aid with the 'weekly shop'.

 

During the winter I'm a fair-weather rider these days, but yesterday I was caught out in some fairly heavy rain.
I'm pleased to find the overall package works quite well. It's not perfect but for any speed above 40mph I was sitting there quite dry.
Oddly, the rain was running down the outside of the helmet visor which was, of course, leading to it being deposited on my upper chest and neck area. If it had been a longer trip I'd have been quite wet there. Otoh, I now have no worries about being out and getting caught in the downpours.
I didn't even have to stop to put on water proof overtrousers.

 

Just Google some Harley add-on lowers and copy them. Or buy a Toyota Corolla but what fun in that?
Cheers, 50gary