Sharkskinz Bodywork

by: Scott Fisher
7/23/97

Well, the 'new look for the Hawk' project has reached completion (more or less) with the fitment of some new Sharkskinz (www.sharkskinz.com) bodywork, so, as promised,here's a report on how things went.

Dealing with Sharkskinz

Piece 'o cake. Knowledgeable, polite, punctual, and the even the 'ordering thru the web site' thing works. They also hooked me up with Gustafsson for the windscreen. 

Quality

Very nice. I purchased the Hawk tail section and upper for a grand total of $510 (current pricing). It took about 6 days for the stuff to get here (Vegas) from Florida,and they were well packed and padded in boxes roughly the size of Winnebagos. The pieces arrived clean and neatly finished, with a beige primer coat on them.

Mounting

Not too bad. I didn't opt for the $160 Sharkskinz mounting kit in favor of fabbing my own, so I can't report on the quality of that equipment. The whole project took the better part of a weekend, which included modifications to the stock subframe and fabrication of 6 separate bracket pieces for the upper (one on each side at the frame, one  on each side next to the radiator, one long one off the front of the steering head to the nose of the fairing, and the up-and-over-the-triples thingie that holds up the top section), as well as paint and stickers and numbers and all that food stuff. Deciding exactly where to mount the upper in relation to the rest of the bike took a little messing around with some duct tape, and I did end up trimming part of the fairing that didn't actually needed to be trimmed, but other wise things went fine. The tail section was also relatively easy,although there was a good bit of trial and error involved to get the angle right.

Fit

It's not a bad looking setup. The fairing is considerably more narrow than the RC30 or RC45 parts, and it just clears on either side of the stock radiator, which forced me to ditch my F2 rad. The narrowness of the fairing makes it look a little tall in the front, as the screen still comes up high enough to get behind, so it ends up looking like you're trying to tuck a giraffe in from certain angles. The tail section has a pretty serious rake,and  if you keep the stock subframe, you'll find that the entire thing is exposed below the new tail, which looks a little funky. Some sort of custom subframe would definitely be the ticket here. The severe rake of the tail less puts some serious distance between the top of the rear tire and the bottom of the bodywork, which also looks a little funny from some angles.

Racing Comfort

The first time I took the thing out in practice, I was ready to chuck the whole bit in the garbage. I'd been racing with the stock seat and no fairing for a season and a half, and compared to that, this was like being strapped to the rack. The angle on the seat was too steep, which hurt my back and put a lot of weight on my wrists, I couldn't get comfortable with hanging off as my tush/knee/pavement relationship was thrown way off, and the fairing blocked a lot of the view I used to have peripherally without a fairing.Plus, the aerodynamic benefits weren't all that impressive (a couple hundred RPMs on the tach).  Eventually, I figured out where to put my butt, Ire-oriented my riding style a little to compensate for the extra seat height/angle, I decided I liked the extra feedback from a more rigid seating position, and I found that drafting people was a lot more comfortable when your head isn't being smacked around by the breeze. In short, I got used to it. It did not, however, help my lap times any; I was running pretty much the same times that I did without the fairing, so I've yet to see any real benefits other than the fact that I look much better in the track photos and the chicks seem to dig it.

Scott Fisher
sfisher@wizard.com
WSMC #587
CCS #507