rider33
New Member
in my quest for a quieter cockpit, I thought I might give the Madstad bracket a try. That was informed by a couple of things: first, I had one on weestrom years ago that seemed to help and second, I find adjusting the Gen. 2 OEM bracket a PITA. And so, I ordered one from Madstad. It came quickly, was well packed, and nicely finished:
Installation was about ten minutes. It comes with instructions but for some reason the photo within appears to be of an earlier prototype as the screen mounts are in the wrong position (in vs out). The verbiage points that out but in case you don't tend to read all of the instructions all of the time the Gen. 2 version has the knobs to the inside and the screen mount tabs to the outside like this:
And so, how does it compare to the OEM unit?
-first, the cross bars on this thing is a full 7/8ths bar stock which means mounting GPS or whatnot to it is going to be very easy. I haven't actually done that yet but it's nice to have options. I also happen to think it looks better than the skinny little OEM bar.
-like the stock bracket, it provides height adjustment. Unlike the stocker tho it also has tilt adjustment as well. For instance, here is the bracket in its lowest position with my Parabellum Tall tilted fully back:
Now same height setting but tilted fully forward:
this time at the highest setting, full back and then full forward tilt:
That's about 4" of tilt on my screen which for you add-a-washer adjustment fans would be a whole lot of washers. The really nice bit is you can do all that in about ten seconds, with heavy gloves on, from your seat. While I would not recommend trying it while moving, it does make the option of pulling over briefly and adjusting it as the weather changes or the wind comes around well within scope.
Now, to the main question: does it provide a Goldwing-like pocket of dead air? Well, not really, it's still a relatively smaller screen sitting quite a bit ahead of you. It does seem to quite things down a bit tho, particularly at lower heights with the screen tilted back. That plus the speed of adjustment is more than worth the price of admission.
http://www.madstad.com/s.nl/sc.7/category.3189/.f
Installation was about ten minutes. It comes with instructions but for some reason the photo within appears to be of an earlier prototype as the screen mounts are in the wrong position (in vs out). The verbiage points that out but in case you don't tend to read all of the instructions all of the time the Gen. 2 version has the knobs to the inside and the screen mount tabs to the outside like this:
And so, how does it compare to the OEM unit?
-first, the cross bars on this thing is a full 7/8ths bar stock which means mounting GPS or whatnot to it is going to be very easy. I haven't actually done that yet but it's nice to have options. I also happen to think it looks better than the skinny little OEM bar.
-like the stock bracket, it provides height adjustment. Unlike the stocker tho it also has tilt adjustment as well. For instance, here is the bracket in its lowest position with my Parabellum Tall tilted fully back:
Now same height setting but tilted fully forward:
this time at the highest setting, full back and then full forward tilt:
That's about 4" of tilt on my screen which for you add-a-washer adjustment fans would be a whole lot of washers. The really nice bit is you can do all that in about ten seconds, with heavy gloves on, from your seat. While I would not recommend trying it while moving, it does make the option of pulling over briefly and adjusting it as the weather changes or the wind comes around well within scope.
Now, to the main question: does it provide a Goldwing-like pocket of dead air? Well, not really, it's still a relatively smaller screen sitting quite a bit ahead of you. It does seem to quite things down a bit tho, particularly at lower heights with the screen tilted back. That plus the speed of adjustment is more than worth the price of admission.
http://www.madstad.com/s.nl/sc.7/category.3189/.f