Fairings?

[DougC]

If one's focus is to improve speed and distance, I think a more effective place to start on a bike is by cleaning up the wake of the rider with a rear fairing....

This would seem to make sense (as drag occurs behind objects, not in front of them) but people on BROL have said that it's not so. The results vary widely with the bicycle type, but generally--with a bicycle that places the rider sitting upright, you see more advantage from adding a front fairing than you do adding a rear.

As the bike gets more and more reclined and longer, the benefit of a front fairing becomes less and less. With these types people commonly add rear fairings but rarely ever bother with a front one:
http://www.jjscozzi.com/Tailbox.htm

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There was a guy posting on BROL who had a fully-faired SWB with a 2-hp engine, and he got it up to something like 60 mph on level ground.

On the IHPVA site somewhere, there is info about adding various aerodynamic devices. Front and rear fairings help a lot, wheel disks help but not nearly as much. Front disks can be very hard to handle in crosswinds, but then, full hard fairings are as well.
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[sparky]

Soo... I was thinking about those "world's fastest bikes" that fastboy9 posted earlier in this thread. From seeing those videos and reading about these tail cones, etc... I'd love to build a fairing that covered my whole upper body (front, back, & sides), from about the hips up, since your chest is prolly the greatest drag in this whole equation. Plus, it'd protect you from all kindsa weather... and even a wreck. Smashing your head against a plastic fairing & letting the fairing take all the scratching from the pavement would be pretty swell.

I was initially thinking of something that mounts right below the handlebars and has a hinge to fold backward when you're getting on so that you're covered, and forward so that you can get off. It'd be difficult to get it to fold just right, so maybe with this folding metal bar... there could also be a way to further slide the fairing up or down this pole. Or maybe there could be a bend near where this pole is mounted onto the frame or gooseneck. I'll have to think about it some more, but I'll let you guys do some more thinking of your own for now.

 

[kaploink]

The Zzipper company makes fairings for bicycles and recumbents that would probably work well. Though, they are rather pricey.

http://www.zzipper.com/