Projects/Scooter Roof: Difference between revisions

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Givitago

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 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!)
+* No need to continually change gears (the VFR clutch is very heavy!)
 * Far better weather protection
 * The ability to use an apron reducing the requirement for trouser protection
@@ Line 11: / Line 11: @@
 * 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.
+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 with the aim of riding something which offers all of the benefits of a motorcycle, but also good weather protection for cold/wet weather riding and improved traffic awareness.
 ==Existing roofed and windscreened scooters==
 ===Honda Gyro Canopy===
+<br>
 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Honda_Canopy_AnnaMillers_Tokyo_2004-02-29.jpg
@@ Line 22: / Line 22: @@
 ===XingYue XY150===
+<br>
 http://www.motorstown.com/images/xingyue-xy150zk-01.jpg
@@ Line 28: / Line 28: @@
 ===BMW C1===
+<br>
 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/BMW_C1_FF_200_%28frontale%29.jpg
@@ Line 34: / Line 34: @@
 ===Benelli Adiva 150===
+<br>
 http://www.egu-motoren.de/images/benellimotortuning.jpg
@@ Line 44: / Line 44: @@
 ===Adiva AD200/250===
-These updates on the Adiva concept were produced from 2007 and answered went a long way to answering the lack of power of the original 150 Benelli version. The AD200/250 have never been sold in the UK so once again, while I considered buying one in Italy where they are more common, the cost and logistics of bringing one back to England did not appeal.
+These updates on the Adiva concept were produced from 2007 and went a long way to answering the lack of power of the original 150 Benelli version. The AD200/250 have never been sold in the UK so once again, while I considered buying one in Italy where they are more common, the cost and logistics of bringing one back to England did not appeal.
 ===Adiva AD3===
+<br>
+http://www.bikehk.com/report/2014/r6231/p1/AO1B6151.JPG
 A relatively recent addition to the family of roofed scooters the AD3 helped improve the cross-wind stability of the original 2-wheel Adivas. Unfortunately they are expensive and once again not available in England. I would be very interested in riding one of these machines as they tick almost all the boxes  for power, stability and weather protection.
@@ Line 52: / Line 55: @@
 ===Piaggio MP3 with Isotta roof system===
+<br>
+http://www.isotta-srl.com/uploads/immaginiArticoli/mp3-01_1.jpg
 Isotta of Italy produce a full windscreen and roof system for around €500. I did consider modifying one of these kits to fit my Fuoco. Isotta don't sell the system in England so I even made an impromptu visit to their factory in Bologna to discuss buying the kit. However, getting the kit back to England would be very expensive to mail, and I still would have the issue of fitting a windscreen wiper/washer combination, and mounting helmet-level rear-view mirrors, which made me hesitate before purchasing.
 http://www.isotta-srl.com/catalogo.html?detail=1&categoria=&marca=25&modello=435&tipologia=&cod=mp3%2F01&pagename=catalogo&ipp=&pg=#ad-image-0
+===Piaggio MP3 with Comfort Windscreen===
+<br>
+http://thekneeslider.com/images/piaggiomp3winter2.jpg
-===Piaggio MP3 with Comfort Windscreen===
 This effort to increase weather protection is interesting, using a very large screen but without providing protection right over your head, and relying on a front-only mounting system. I have never tried an MP3 with this type of windscreen but I suspect that a lack of wiper will make visibility pretty poor when it rains, and the front-only mounting system will mean that there is a lot of whip at the top of the windscreen on uneven roads.
+===Scodiam Vestratis===
+<br>
+http://scodiam.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/faq.png
+This is a very interesting offering, from a young company in France. It uses a glass windscreen which will be good for scratch resistance. Not sure if the roof and structure is steel or aluminium. I believe that it weights about 32kg. The roof is available on Amazon in the UK for £1260 including delivery. If they could lose some weight on this option I think they would be more marketable..
+==Honourable mentions==
+<br>
+https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/w/images/thumb/e/e5/MP3_wiper.jpg/600px-MP3_wiper.jpg
+I came across this bike in London with a home-mounted windscreen wiper on the comfort windscreen mentioned above. Could do with a bit of a clean though!
 ==Designing the roof==
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 However, Polycarbonate has very low scratch resistance unless it is coated with a scratch resistant covering
-Scratch resistance is a big consideration given that I wanted to use a windscreen wiper on my screen. My Benelli Adiva has a plastic windscreen
+Scratch resistance is a big consideration given that I wanted to use a windscreen wiper on my screen. My Benelli Adiva has a plastic windscreen which resisted scratches very well, but I think that it must have had some kind of coating on it, the downside was that it wasn't possible to polish scratches out of the surface.
-I again had my decision made for me in that I was able to acquire a second-hand comfort windscreen in good condition at a very low cost. I based my design on the use of that windscreen, although the scratch resistance of this windscreen has yet to be determined.
+I again had my decision made for me in that I was able to acquire a second-hand comfort windscreen in good condition at a very low cost. I based my design on the use of that windscreen, although the scratch resistance of this windscreen is not as good as the Benelli Adiva windscreen. I think that there may be pro's a cons to having a perspex windscreen. I am going to see if I can polish out any scratches using 3M Marine Finesse-It II Finishing Cream as advised in [http://www.boatingmag.com/gear/boatinglab-tests-windshield-restoration-products BoatingMag.com]. If that works then the scratching issue shouldn't be so much of a concern.
 ===Windscreen wiper===
+<br>
+https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/w/images/8/80/Dashboard_small.jpg
 The decision here was fairly easy as I already have experienced parallelogram windscreen wipers, so I was happy to obtain a second-hand wiper motor and arms from a scrapped bike. A custom set of mounting brackets were needed to mount the wiper.
+UPDATE: I've replaced the parallelogram wiper with a smaller single wiper. This doesn't rattle and vibrate as much as the larger parallelogram unit wiper arms but still clears enough of the screen for forward visibility.
 ==The Build==
 ===Manufacturing the frame===
+<br>
+https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/w/images/3/33/Pipebender.jpg
 I had chosen relatively thick walled aluminium tubing to make it easier to weld the joints without blowing through the tube ends. The downside to thick walled tubing was that I found it cracked if I bent it at two tight an angle on our pneumatic pipe bender. I tried to anneal the pipe before bending to see if I could reduce the cracking issue but found that it didn't make much difference. Since I've never tried this process before it may have been that I needed to experiment further with heating and cooling, but I found that I could just about get away with bending the tubing as much as I needed to form the frame without cracking the tubing.
@@ Line 114: / Line 141: @@
 The windsreen is held onto the frame with 6mm stainless steel bolts, which fasten into threaded holes in welded lugs.
+https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/w/images/8/8c/Rearviewmirror.jpg|frameless|200px
+I welded lugs at eye-level to hold slightly convex mirrors on each side of the frame, which really help with visibility in rush hour traffic and dual carriageways.
 ===The windscreen wiper motor===
+<br>
+https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/w/images/a/a3/Wipermotor_small.jpg
 The windscreen wiper motor proved tricky to install, I had to take it apart to work out how the internal wiring worked to "park" the wiper in the correct position once power is removed from the main circuit. At the moment the wiper is wired only to work when the power is supplied and the parking circuit is disabled. I intend to upgrade the circuit to include the return to park function and operate this via a foot switch when I remove the remove the roof for an upgrade.
@@ Line 126: / Line 160: @@
 ===The power circuit===
+<br>
+https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/w/images/1/1e/Wiring_final_small.jpg
 I used a little fuse piggy back tap to take a power feed from an existing switched fuse and used this to fire a relay which provides power to the wiper and washer when the ignition is switched on. I chose a circuit which wasn't crucial to the running of the bike in case it proved to be unreliable and failed while I was riding the bike.
 I was worried that somebody might switch the wiper on while the bike is parked and scratch up the windscreen/run down the battery so this is an important feature.
@@ Line 132: / Line 169: @@
 I was surprised at how much space is required to wire in the switches and relays for the power circuit. The first ABS box I tried to use wasn't big enough to get everything in. I found that the easiest way to wire all different wires into positive and earth was to use two brass earth blocks and connect the different wires.
-All the circuits are fuse protected to make sure that there is no possibility of fire if any of the wires short circuit.
+All the circuits are fuse protected to make sure that there is no possibility of fire if any of the wires short circuit. To keep things neat I used relays with integrated fuses rather than separate fuse blocks.
 ===The roof/canopy===
@@ Line 143: / Line 180: @@
 ===MOT vehicle test===
-The company which does my MOT test were happy to confirm that the roof was roadworthy and issue a new MOT with the roof fitted.
+The company which does my MOT test were happy to confirm that the roof was roadworthy and issue a new MOT with the roof fitted. I also was recently stopped in a random roadside police check of driver insurance documents. The police were very excited to examine the roof and didn't have any problems with it at all.
 ===Road test===
+<br>
+{{#ev:youtube|q8Itp0R9z1g}}
 The roof has met or exceeded all my expectations. The tig-welded frame and plastic windscreen/roof combo has proved light and stiff enough to make almost no change to the handling of the bike. The mounting points have proved more than strong enough to hold the frame steady, even through the roughest potholes that London can throw at it. There are no rattles from the frame at all.
-Visibility is still very good, the frame tubes and wiper arms do not obstruct sightlines. The eye-level rear view mirrors dramatically improve your awareness of vehicles behind you, which is essential when you are going through London rush-hour traffic.
-Apart from the very heaviest rain, you only need to operate the windscreen wiper on an intermittent basis. Until I wire the foot switch to operate the intermittent wipe function.
+The stability of the bike has not been significantly impacted by wind gusts of over 40 mph (between 5pm and 6pm on Feb 8th 2016).
+Visibility is still very good, the frame tubes and wiper arms do not obstruct sightlines. The eye-level rear view mirrors dramatically improve your awareness of vehicles behind you, which is essential when you are going through London rush-hour traffic. I have seen a bit of scratching on the perspex from the windscreen wiper, we'll see how my it degrades over time and if we can polish out scratches to increase the life of the windscreen.
+Apart from the very heaviest rain, you only need to operate the windscreen wiper on an intermittent basis. Until I wire the foot switch to operate the intermittent wipe function I am just switching the wiper on for a single wipe to clear when necessary. I have found that the London roads are too rough to have the windscreen on all the time, as there is too much bounce when going over potholes.
+I have found that there is an element of misting of the plastic windscreen on cold mornings when there is a lot of dew around, it takes a while for this to clear even if you use the windscreen wiper as it reforms. I'm considering fitting a small electric fan to help clear the condensation, perhaps try a prototype to judge effectiveness, and then create a permanent mounting if it works well.
+===Six months later===
+The Fuocco has been brilliant over the winter, handling very windy conditions with no problems at all.
+I had to re weld one of the rear uprights where a stress fracture was starting to appear, and that now appears sound.
+One of the big things that I have learnt is that the windscreen which I'm pretty sure is Perspex and not polycarbonate, will acquire tiny little scratches called swirl. If you are riding into the sun, or bright headlamps these scratches make it more difficult to see through the windscreen. In cloudy conditions there is no problem and the scratches are invisible.
+As mentioned above I polished the windscreen with a power polisher, a lambswool pad and 3M Finesse It II plastic renovation cream, and it removed almost all of the swirl and made riding directly into low sunshine much easier. I can thoroughly recommend this to anybody with Perspex windscreens. It only takes a few minutes to do. If the windscreen wiper scratches the Perspex more I will test buffing a scrap piece of Perspex with high-grade wet and dry sand-paper before buffing with the same cream. If that works the life of the windscreen will be many many years, with occaisional polishing. If you are going to try this for the first time, do a small test patch first to make sure that there aren't any special coatings which may be damaged by the cream.
+Happy riding folks!