[mhl]

Hello everybody, glad to find such a great site for beginners.

I’m still learning to ride the motorcycle on XT125X for now, but looking forward to upgrade to the more powerful one as soon as I become comfortable with riding on 125cc. Reading review, searching all over the internet and going down to the local dealerships to look at the bikes I’ve ended with a choice of Kawasaki ER-6 as my next bike (I believe it’s known in the USA as 650R). But, what I can’t make my mind about so far is whether I should go with a naked or a faired one.

Price different is not important, but my two major concerns here are:

1. As I’m still pretty much a beginner, I expect to lay down the bike (though certainly hope not to, but still). I’ll get a fairing guards right away, but still the certain damage is expected. So while I can get a replacement fairing online, I estimate the cost of a serious fall (like when about a half of the fairing is badly scratched/broken) will cost me about $700-1000 USD to replace the fairing. So while I can afford that, I’ve got a better ways to spend my money, of course. On the other hand – I guess dropping the naked bike will result on a lot of scratches and certain damage is well, so it will cost me some significant money to fix in any way.

2. On the other hand, faired bike provides some level of protection against the wind. While I’m not going to ride and mind boggling speeds any time soon, still we’ve got a normal speed at the highway of about 120 km/h here, so I’d like to be comfortable with riding at least up to 140-150 km/h for a short periods of time, and at 120 km/h for a long time (say 1-2 hours). I’d say I’m getting a not very comfortable feel even on my small Yamaha right now when I get it up to about 80 km/h, so I wonder if the fairing will provide a good enough protection on the highway, and if this is a reason enough to decide against the naked bike.

Can anyone (maybe with an experience of riding on both types) share his though on both comfort and costs for naked/faired bikes?

Thanks, guys.

[JackTrade]

(That’s what they call the naked one here in the states). Just not wild about the oddball gauges, and the color we got here this year (flat black) isn’t really my cup of tea. Hopefully maybe in a year or two they’ll have sorted it all out for the U.S. market…bring us the Kawasaki green or the cool Euro orange, and give us proper gauges.

As someone who owns a naked bike (Buell P3 Blast) currently, and has done some sustained highway riding at 120 – 140 kph (75 – 85 mph here), it is doable, but does tire you out after a couple of hours.

I guess it depends on how often you’ll be crusing at those speeds…if it’s just for fun on the weekends, I’d say get the the ER-6n…but if you’re commuting to work everyday, might be better to get the faired version.

[Gary856]

Below 70 mph wind on a naked bike is not a problem for me; above that it’s nice to have some sort of wind protection.

With a naked bike, you can still get a handlebar-mounted aftermarket windscreen that you can put on and remove easily. An aftermarket windscreen helps, but you may have to experiment with the size/height/shape/angle to get the level of protection, noise, buffeting that’s acceptable to you. Even with a factory faired bike, some times people play with aftermarket windscreens for better protection or appearance.

[mhl]

ok, thanks for your input, guys. Can’t say that I’ve made my mind, but getting my food for thought. While I’m not going to use it for daily commuting (working at home I’m not doing much of a commuting at all), but still I’d like to be comfortable riding around the town a couple of times per week and taking it out to the twisties in the mountains for the weekend or a highway ride to the sea.

Looks like there’s a variety of aftermarket options for the windscreen, but I can as well take off some lower fairings on the faired model. Too bad the local Kawasaki dealers only have faired version on display, but – well, I’ve still got enough time to think about it and make up my mind.

[SantaCruzRider]

I’ve owned and ridden both and personally find that a faired bike is much more comfortable when the ride is at highway speed and exceeds an hour or so. It’s amazing how much buffeting is removed by a good fairing and this can make longer rides much less tiring — which ultimately improves your ability to remain alert and can improve safety.

Balanced against this is the fact that fairings can be a big PIA with maintenance. Also, not all bikes are conducive to just leaving the lowers off as they may provide important support to the uppers.

As for drops: There are few parts on the side of the bike that do well on the ground. Fairings are expensive, but so is the tank, mirrors, turn signals, engine case, etc. This is where a used bike really makes sense — limiting the ding to your resale as well as being far less disheartening if you get that first scratch.

[TrialsRider]

How about one of each

A very well designed fairing will save fuel, improve high speed performance and keep you mostly dry in a light rain. They are great at buffering the wind effect from on-comming transport truck traffic, deflecting flying rocks and assorted road debris. I personally don’t like handlebar mounted fairings as they directly transfer wind energy into your steering controls . The ideal fairing design is one developed in a wind tunnel with a rider on, some bikes were obviously designed to be wind slippery without a rider, which is kind of like being a wing walker.
Cafe racers look better naked, ( I won’t say what I really wanted to say about that ; )

[JackTrade]

TrailsRider reminds me of an interesting point…the Suzuki GS500f can be easily converted from a faired bike to a naked bike and back again w/a few parts, since all they did in 2004 was stick a fairing on the naked version.

The GStwins website has instructions…looks fairly straightforward.

I know you’re looking at 650cc bikes, but if wiling to consider a 500, that might give you the best of both worlds…

[mhl]

well, two bikes will be a bit overkill Not to say I just don’t have enough space in my parking lot to stuff them all in, and there’re no closed/guarded garages here to store the bikes. Good thing that you’ve noted that about handlebar fairings, haven’t thought about it myself before.

[mhl]

Suzuki looks not too bad, thanks for pointing that out. Guess I’ll have to find one of them here and take a look at it.

[Author]

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