Installing a Sportbike Windshield

Task Difficulty:

Product: Lockhart Speedscreen

Appearance:

Fit:

One of the simplest modifications to make to any sportbike is a change of the stock windshield. Stock windshields tend to work well, but are typically thin plastic that scratches a little too easily. Aftermarket windscreens are usually thicker, and come in a variety of colors.

Belldandy, the 1996 900SS-SP of the Garage of Xanadu, was getting in need of a new screen. Several long, bug-filled trips had scuffed and scratched the old windshield to the point of optical obscurity (well, it wasn’t that bad, but it was enough to be annoying).

I looked around at a few different windscreens and ordered a Lockhart Speedscreen from Lockhart Phillips USA . The Speedscreen is a thick slab of acrylic, moulded to fit the bike in question, and costs around. Another good alternative is Zero Gravity . Both make screens in a variety of colors, from clear to purple. I opted for the smoke screen for the Ducati, something a little different from stock but still reserved and classy.

The Ducati is a simple bike to change the screen -- the fairing is in three parts, the two sides and the central section, which carries the windscreen. The bike is designed to be worked on -- the front section of the fairing can be removed without removing anything other than the mirrors. A 4mm allen wrench fits all the fairing fittings, including the mirrors, making the removal process painless. Four fairing bolts and four mirror bolts later, I had the front section off the bike and in my hands.

The windshield itself is held on by six 3mm button head allen screws that feed through the fairing and the windscreen, and into appropriate sized wellnuts. Well nuts are nuts that are encased in rubber, allowing them to squish down firmly and hold in place. Wellnuts are also flanged to allow them to be placed into bodywork holes, where the flange and flexibility of the rubber keep them in place when the screw is removed. Wellnuts are good for blind, low load applications as well, since the rubber keeps the nut in place and allows the bolt to be threaded through. Wellnuts are also perfect for bodywork for another reason -- they are nearly impossible to overtorque.

Once I had the screen off, I pulled the wellnuts from the old screen and put them into the new windscreen (and at about this time I recalled the cheapo digital camera used for these pictures). The wellnuts are pretty simple to remove, just a twist and a tug from the long side pops them out, and installation requires a squeeze to get them started and a pair of needle nosed pliers to gently pull the flange through and set the wellnut in place.

Once the wellnuts are in place, the windshield can be bolted into place. The proper way to install bodywork is to go front to rear, so the two bolts at the front of the windscreen go in first. The hole placement in the Lockhart screen was good for these two bolts, but as I went around I found that the other holes weren’t so good. It seemed that the curvature of the windscreen is a little tighter than the old stock screen, making it a little difficult to get all the bolts cleanly in place. I secured each lightly and got the screen on, then tightened them front to rear. This left a slight gap on the rear edges of the windscreen, about a sixteenth of an inch on the right side and an eight on the left.

The screen looks pretty good in place; the gaps are small enough to go unnoticed, and the dark smoke looks good on the red bike.