Pichler Uni-4 Fairing

PICHLER UNI-4 FAIRING

A LONG-HAUL LESSON IN LESS

EVALUATION

NOT SO MANY YEARS AGO, TOURING motorcycles were built, not bought; and one of the first add-ons, the watershed between motorcycle and touring bike, inevitably was a fairing. These days, you simply plunk your money down for a ready-made turnkey tourer; but if you’ve a mind to, you still can steer your bike down the road to long-hauldom with the addition of a fairing. And Pichler’s Uni-4 fairing is one of the most recent examples of that breed. Like most other aftermarket touring fairings, the German-made Uni-4 is a frame-mount, 3/4-style, with the usual amenities, such as dual, locking storage bins and an adjustable headlight. Pichler’s fairing departs from normal practice, though, with its threepiece design; the sides bolt to the main fairing, and can be replaced if damaged. A less-impressive depar-

ture—at first glance—is Pichler’s use of staples to hold the fairing’s inner and outer layers together. Most other manufacturers use adhesive for that task, but a spokesman for Pichler says

the staples equal adhesives in strength, and make the fairing easier and cheaper to produce. The Uni-4’s mounting system, on the other hand, looks plenty beefy. Some 5 pounds of Steel tubing and plate clamp solidly to the bike’s steering head, and provide six mounting points.

Actually installing the Uni-4, though, can make a rider roll his eyes heavenward in despair. For starters, our fairing was missing both an important bolt-and-nut assembly and the turnsignal sockets. In addition, the fit of the fairing’s sides, and of the fairing to the mounting bracket, was less than precise, so pieces had to be yanked into position. Plus, the hinge on the right-side bin’s lid was bent, and an attempt to straighten it pulled loose one of its rivets. In all, mounting the fairing took some five hours.

The glitches don’t stop after the Uni-4 is in place, either. Ours was bolted to a SuzukiGS1150E, and the fairing’s position was such that the still-air pocket it created was out in front of the rider. Moreover, the fairing isn’t as large as some others, and while it does protect the rider's torso from the direct onslaught of wind, rain and bugs, there’s substantial bleed-over of air around the fairing’s sides. There’s also an almost constant fluttering at the rider’s rib cage which increases with road speed. Even more maddening is the noise the Uni-4 generates. At certain engine rpm, the fairing is still and quiet, but at others, the plastic pieces and metal bin lids vibrate in a moaning, howling cacophony that makes the bike sound like a low-flying Spad.

This is not to suggest that the Uni4 is completely without virtue. The acrylic windscreen is optically clear, and the supplied Hella headlight works superbly, cutting a bright, broad swath through the darkness. The Uni-4 is light, too, a thin-wall vacuum-forming of a multiple-polymer plastic developed for Pichler by General Electric; the unit weighs only about 18 pounds. And, compared to some other manufacturers' premium fairings, Pichler’s is significantly cheaper, retailing for $516 unpainted, $556 in black, red or white, and $610 in factory-matched metallic colors. Still, the price for Pichler's Uni-4 fairing (available from Pichler of America, 824 W. 10th St., Suite 109, Austin, Texas 78701; [512] 4769726) provides a quick course in Moto-Economics 101. You pay less money and get less weight and bulk than with some other fairings, but you get less weather protection, more noise and more installation headaches. So in the end, you get what you pay for—and in some cases, more than you bargained for.