Projects/Scooter Roof

Background

I have been riding motorcycles for about 30 years and over the past 5 years have been commuting into work in central London on a daily basis, originally I used my Honda VFR750.

It became quickly apparent to me that the motorcycles are not best suited for city commuting and scooters are a better option for a number of reasons.

• No need to continually chnage gears (the VFR clutch is very heavy!)
• Far better weather protection
• The ability to use an apron reducing the requirement for trouser protection
• Small scooter engines warm up more quickly and don't use as much petrol
• More upright, comfortable riding position allowing easier rear visibility

In addition to moving to a scooter for transportation I was also interested in increasing the amount of weather protection available which would reduce the amount of wet weather gear required for rainy/cold weather and so reviewed the various options.

Honda Gyro Canopy Honda have been selling these tilting 3 wheel scooters for many years in Japan. While I would be very keen to try one of these, there are very few in England and the logistics of importing one from Japan and maintaining it with poor availability of spares made me wary of continuing with this avenue. They only have 50cc engines so performance would be pretty poor too.

XingYue XY150 I bought one of these Chinese clones of the Honda Gyro, but found the build quality and road holding of these machines to be disappointing and decided to sell it again.

BMW C1 Many people use these roofed scooters, which were only sold for a couple of years around 2000. The concept is that the rider sits in a safety cell, held in place with safety belts. In many countries riders are not required to wear crash helmets while riding C1s but this exemption is not available in the UK. I haven't tried a C1, but they have a reputation for being top heavy, which is probably due to the weight of the glass windscreen and strong roof. Given that I will be doing a lot of traffic filtering this put me off a bit.

Benelli Adiva 150 These Italian machines are rare in England. They are convertibles with a retractable roof. With optional clear side fairings surrounding the windscreen they provide fantastic weather protection, and the plastic windscreen is much lighter than the BMW C1's glass equivalent. I own a Benelli Adiva which I enjoy riding, but there are some disadvantages.

While considering acquiring a scooter it also made sense to me that increasing weather protection with a roof would make a lot of sense