Madstad for F6B

[Bruce B]

Bruce, looking forward to more of your input. Did you get the Dark Grey? After thinking about it more I think I'm going to swap out my 16" for the 11". That will give me adjustment from 11 to 14 inches in height. Do you have the stock seat? Just wondering since Mark was so far off on the shield height for me? Just seems a waste not to be able to use the vertical adjustment built into the brackets. If I get a chance today I'll try to test out Marks claim that raising the shield too much reduces it's effectiveness. Since I'm already looking through what I have I'll just run it to the top of the 3" adjustment and see what happens.

In the end maybe I'll end up with two shields (11" for solo riding and 13" for two up)? Shields are easy to swap out, just 4 screws. This weekend my girlfriend will get a chance to see if the Madstad helps her at the passenger location? She rides herself but when riding two up with me loves the comfort of the F6B. I had the 11" Baggershield previously and she says there was just as much wind with that as on the back of my Road King and Heritage Softail.

One reason I went with Madstad was to avoid the curved top edge on the competitions shield which is not optically clear. Just thought that might be too distracting when the height is set just below your line of sight. Also I thought the Madstad brackets with height and rake adjustment looked better than the competition with height and rake adjustment.

In the photos I posted the shield is set at 55 degrees using an angle gauge I have for accuracy. The stock shield on mine was almost right at 45 degrees. So you can see that 55 to 60 degrees does not stand upright that much compared to the front fairing. The photos of the Goldwing on the Madstad sight appear to have the shield adjusted well beyond the 60 degree target which looks a lot more funky?

The brackets came assembled so that there is a 2-5/8" gap between the base shield and top shield which seems like a big gap??? The brackets have multiple holes which allow that gap to be reduced by moving the hardware to different holes in the brackets (these can be seen in my closeup photo). So the adjustment possibilities are almost infinite which is good and bad.

Just a quick response here on a couple of items. I got the light gray but think I will switch to the medium or dark gray. You say that you are a tall guy and I think that the 13 inch may be better than the 11 which Mark said would be for guys shorter than me. I'm 5' 9-10". I have a Rick Mayer seat which places me about 1 inch above stock.

Regarding Mark saying that raising the shield too much reduces it's effectiveness. That's because it allows too much air flow up between the shield and the base. He was not referring to the height of the top of the shield. He was referring to the height of the bottom of the shield. Look on this thread at the picture of the installation on a Road Glide or look at the GL1800 pictures on the Madstad site. The shield is fairly close to the bottom of the base. Using an 11 inch shield, you'd have to slide it higher to get the top up where you want it. The bottom of the shield would be quite a ways up the base. At least that's my interpretation of what he said. Not that I'm any expert. I may have misunderstood but I think that's what Mark was saying.

I haven't tried the shield with a passenger yet and would appreciate you sharing your experience on that.

[Scotrod]

Attachment 2660

Just testing,,,:

Attachment 2659


Attachment 2661

Attachment 2662

[Scotrod]

Hmm,

Would it be possible to go to a 'lower hole' on the base bracket to 'tighten up' the gap up front while keeping the same rake?

(Y'all might have to cut me some slack as I've only looked at 1-2 of the MadStad 'robo-bracket' downloads to get a general grasp of how they work. Quite sure there is more than 1 form of robo bracket.)

[d-shark]

OK, from my house it's a straight 4 mile shot East to the interstate (we don't have curves in Illinois). I made three runs to and from the interstate, each round trip 8 miles.

First run was with the shield in the full up position set at 55 degrees, got up to 80 mph at times. I did not notice any difference from my ride yesterday with the shield in the full down position. Adjustment range from full up to full down is about 3-1/4 inches

Second run was with the shield in the full down position set at 55 degrees, got up to 80 mph at times. I did not notice any real difference from the first run. Stood up on the pegs to see how far I could look over the shield before getting into the wind. The shield was producing a nice bubble allowing me to look well over the shield with no real loss in wind protection compared to sitting and looking through the shield.

Third run was with the shield once again in the full up position set at 55 degrees, got up to 80 mph at times. Stood up on the pegs to see how far I could look over the shield before getting into the wind. I have to say with the shield all the way up I think the bubble of calm air was actually a little higher. I certainly couldn't detect any reduction in windshield effectiveness.

Now it's possible that a shorter 11" shield in the highest bracket position will not channel the air up and over as effectively as the 16" shield I tested here??? For me given this test I think it's worth it for me to give the 11 inch shield a try.

[d-shark]

Scotrod, yes it looks to me like the shield could be adjusted up to about 1 inch closer to the base shield by moving the Robo Bracket rake bolts to different holes provided in the brackets. With my current shield all the way down, the gap between the bottom of the shield and faring is about 2 inches. The distance between the center cut-out and the base shield is about 3 inches (in other words the center cut-out is well above the faring itself. When I raise the shield all the way up then there is a consistent 3 inch gap from side to side between the top shield and base shield (so there is a bigger gap to let more air in in the full up position).

It's interesting that in my test having the shield in the highest position I was unable to detect any loss in shield effectiveness. Point being increasing the gap between the base and top shield in my test had no obvious negative effect. I don't know how much actual first hand riding experience the guys a Madstad have had with the Goldwing? The Wings have a hell of a front faring compared to most bikes Madstad have their shields on. Could be the Madstad shield behaves a little differently when mounted on such a big fairing ???

[Scotrod]

I must admit I'm semi-sorta confused with 'up' - 'down',,,

D-Shark, have you unbolted the upper bracket and rebolted it in a lower hole yet in an attempt to lessen the gap between shield/fairing, or are you speaking of the up/down adjustments otherwise available?

IMHO, the full fairing on the gwing helps keep a lot of the turbulence created by the low pressure zone behind the shield away from the rider. Only guessing, but the Madstad on a Wing might actually need less air to 'do its magic' than other bikes as its 'better to begin with' regarding turbulence in the riders area. (hope that made sense)

The 'image' I have in my head of all this may be fubar. I wish I had a F6B bracket in my hand,,,, maybe I wouldn't be as 'confused'.

Ehh, probably not,,, I stay confused a lot of the time!

[Bruce B]

I must admit I'm semi-sorta confused with 'up' - 'down',,,

D-Shark, have you unbolted the upper bracket and rebolted it in a lower hole yet, or are you speaking of the up/down adjustments otherwise available?

The 'image' I have in my head of all this may be fubar. I wish I had a F6B bracket in my hand,,,, maybe I wouldn't be as 'confused'.

Ehh, probably not,,, I stay confused a lot of the time!

The bracket is two piece, one bolted to the base (much like our OEM shield) on the bike and the other bolted to the shield. They are mated and the shield bracket slides up and down in the base bracket. What we refer to as up and down is actually at the angle of the base and has the effect of raising the shield. Since it's at an angle, it also produces some minimal fore and aft movement of the shield. The rake is also adjustable. Both rake and height are held in place by the same knobbed screw on each bracket.

The re-bolting to lower holes in each bracket is a separate issue. That would simply place the shield a bit closer to the base. I think I'll be leaving mine at the factory setting until I have that dialed in. Might then play with the lower setting just for giggles and grins.

[d-shark]

If you zoom on the close-up photo I have of the right Robo Bracket you will see a long somewhat vertical slot on the portion of the bracket mounted directly to the shield. This long slot provides the 3-1/4 inches of up and down adjustment and has nothing to do with rake. You can see the slot the locking knob goes through which controls the rake independently. In this photo the shield is in it's highest position and raked forward to almost vertical. The portion of the bracket with the various holes is attached to the base shield or adapter plate as referred to by Madstad.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-o...018_152545.jpg

[Scotrod]

Excellent pic!!!! Thanks!!

Attachment 2664

[Bruce B]

Got my 13 inch Madstad installed and think I have it dialed in. I'm 5'9-10" and I think the 13 incher is probably the best fit. I had a 13" Cee Bailey's prior to the Madstad. Former wind noise and buffeting is gone. I have the top edge a little below my line of sight and think that it's supposed to be lower than that so I'll be trying to lower it a bit. Freeway traffic creates so much turbulence that proper adjustment is hard to determine. Will have to take a jaunt to the country and get up to speed in some clean air. Overall I like the Madstad a lot. I have the light smoke shield and think I'll switch to the medium smoke. Quality of the sheild and hardware is very good. I'll try to attach some pics here but not sure how that's going to go.