Custom Honda Shadow VT600 Touring Bike
Вставка
- Опубліковано 26 жов 2024
- Here is my 2006 Honda VT600 VLX custom touring bike. I fabricated brackets to mount a Craig Vetter Windjammer 4 fairing with matching bags and trunk. I'm too old and cripple to ride these new modern small cars on two wheels Touring Bikes have become. The fairing, bags, and trunk were popular in the 1970's and it's still a better design than what is on modern factory built touring bikes. The seat on my Shadow is low so getting my leg over it is no problem and the bike's weight is low as well. No one builds anything like it today.
Amazing job can’t beat Vetter with a stick
Very cool. Great job on your vt600 tourer
I ve been thinking of doing that to my Ace with my 79 Goldwing Vetter tour pack, im turning my wing into a cafe.
Amazing really great job bro
I'm in the process of getting an old 2003 Honda VT600C roadworthy again (my very first "project bike") and I love the idea of equipping it as a "Shadow Wing!" Does yours have any trouble maintaining Interstate highway speeds comfortably, with a bit of power to spare for passing, etc.? Also, do you know the specific models of the fairing and cases you installed? I'd hate to order parts that didn't quite fit by mistake. Thanks!
My Shadow struggled doing 70 mph until I installed a Windjammer fairing, bag's, and trunk on it. Craig Vetter designed it all in a wind tunnel in the late 1960's. It's an aerodynamic package that actually improves the performance of a motorcycle it's fitted on. Doing 70 with the stock sprockets and chain with the fairing was suddenly easy. My gas mileage improved as well. Before I put the fairing on I could get about 95 miles on a full tank before hitting reserve. After I was going 130 miles on the same amount of gas. Considering that's just a little more than 2 gallons of gas it's a huge improvement in fuel mileage. My zero to 60 times improved a little as well. The only thing is you must fabricate a bracket for mounting the fairing to the bikes frame. It doesn't simply attach to the handlebar. They stopped making brackets for motorcycles in 1980. Each one is a custom design for each make and model of motorcycle. Craig would give a custom made bracket away to anyone that brought a bike in they had not made a bracket for so they had a motorcycle to custom fit a bracket on and then build a jig so that specific bracket could be fabricated easy and fast for more of those motorcycles. It's not difficult to fabricate a bracket IF you can cut and weld metal. I've been doing that since I was 13 years old. Now I'm 66 years old and at the point I'm really to old to do it lol. Anyway the fairings stopped being made in 1980 along with the bag's and trunks. Honda, Yamaha, and Harley Davidson began selling fully factory outfitted touring bikes so no one was buying Vetter touring gear anymore. I found my Vetter touring gear on an old Kawasaki in a motorcycle parts yard. It took me a half hour to remove it from that bike and $100 for the complete set. I spent a week fabricating all the brackets I needed to fit it all to my Shadow.
Totally love the originality of your bike. I would be proud to take it anywhere. Awesome work. 👌 As far as horns go, I hooked up an old car alarm in with the original horns on 1of my motorcycles, it definitely gets people's attention when I honk it.
I recently added a Velorex 562 sidecar to it. I'm 12 years older when I originally added the old touring gear. I was seriously thinking I might need to give up riding it but after adding the sidecar I have more years of riding it ahead of me. No more worries of dropping it now lol.
@@n4zou Yes, I'm intermittently watching your other videos. I did see the sidecar. Your pretty handy. I'm glad to hear it extended your time to continue riding. 😊
Man I would like to know how did u mount it I just got me a windjammer but have a bmw mounting bracket trying to mount on a 85 Suzuki Madura 1200 any info would be great love the video and mods
First you must check if the fairing will fit your bike. Modern motorcycles have wider forks and gas tank. If it fits then you must fabricate a bracket to mount it to the motorcycle. I hung my Windjammer fairing from the roof inside my shop and positioned it where it needed to mount to the motorcycle. Then measured for the bracket I needed to make.
nice video! did you change your rear cog?
Nope! Still the stock sprocket sizes. I need to make an updated video of it. It now has a Velorex 562 Cruiser Sidecar attached to the right side. The only mistake I made was not getting a Sidecar for it about a decade ago lol.
Have you changed the sprocket size on your shadow?
Also I want to slowly set my shadow600 up for semi touring, any suggestions on what to do first?
I just replaced my sprockets and chain retaining the stock setup. I know a lot of us VLX rider's go from the 44 to a 42 rear sprocket but because I pull a Bushtec trailer I would have trouble with the higher gearing. I hate freeway riding as well. It's not the destination, it's the ride for me so I actually enjoy riding back roads at slower speed's and the stock sprocket setup is perfect for that as well. As for touring, you can tour on anything! Back in 1985 when I switched from the navy to the army I rode my 1983 Honda VF750FRR Interceptor from San Diego, CA to Warrant officer school at FT Rucker in Alabama. Most people would never ride a sport bike across the country, but I did and it was fun. The key to touring is making your bike easy to ride for hours at a time without hurting body parts. You might need to change the height and pullback of your handlebars depending on your body geometry. If you feel you are reaching forward for the grips get the handlebars closer or if your arms are bent to much move the handlebars forward. When you feel like you are in a normal position on the bike you now have a touring bike.
How does that ride with a passenger?...love my lil sporty bob for cruising round town, being obnoxious, but thinking of doing something a little more passenger/roadtrip worthy
It does just fine. My wife likes it because she can lean back on the trunk pad and relax. She also enjoys the calm space created by the Windjammer fairing and the special design of the bag's and trunk that guide the air around them and to the back of the bike so there's no back draft of air coming back up her back. I like it because there's no buffeting or wind noise. That Vetter touring gear was very expensive back in the 70's but Craig Vetter built and sold over a million of them because they performed so well. If you had a Honda GL1000 Goldwing you had to have a Windjammer fairing, bags, and trunk on it. People think they came that way from the factory but they never did. Dealer's just started installing that touring gear before selling the bike's because everyone wanted a fully dressed Goldwing.
Do you know if a windjammer 3 can fit onto a 2005 Suzuki boulevard C50 ? Please let me know. Thank you
@@doakbettis469 the Craig Vetter Windjammer fairings are all the same size and all use the same size bracket that bolts to the fairing mount. Only the part's that clamp to the motorcycle frame are different. All design and production of brackets ended in the very early 1980's so bike's produced after that never had any brackets made for them. Most modern motorcycles have forks and gas tanks too wide for any Windjammer fairing made and so they will not fit. The forks can't be wider than 10 inches and the gas tank can't be wider than 14 inches. My Honda VLX Shadow has 10 inch wide forks and a 14 inch wide gas tank. It just barely fit. I also had to design and fabricate a mounting bracket for it. It was a lot of work! Craig started designing the Windjammer fairing in the late 1960's and began production in the very early 1970's. Back then drum brakes were used up front so fork widths we're very narrow and gas tanks back then were long and narrow. Gas tanks today are fat at the front and taper back and are usually too wide to fit. You will need to measure your fork and gas tank width to figure out if a Windjammer fairing would fit.
Work those 30 hp.
41 ponies 😅