Yamaha 1300 Tourer - Yamaha 1300 Tourer Fansite

Before I purchased this fairing, I did look at a couple on the market that had built in stereos, speakers, even a GPS unit, but I didn’t need all of the bells and whistles. I didn’t want to spend $1000+ and I didn’t want to worry about painting to color match my bike. I do listen to an iPod sometimes when I ride, but not all of the time and would like to have some music on my bike rather than always through an ear bud, and there are plenty of handlebar bolt on speaker systems on the market already.

I wanted a fairing that I could choose my height of the windshield. I could choose to have the side deflectors or not. I could choose to have some chrome or not. And surprisingly, I found the Memphis Shades Batwing with a trigger-lock mount kit that allows me to remove the fairing if I so desire.

Out of the box

I figured that I would go ahead and purchase the Memphis Shades Batwing, with required windshield, deflectors, chrome molded fairing trim, the windshield tri-pouch, and the trigger-lock mounting hardware instead of just the standard bolt on hardware. When I received everything I pulled each item out of the box or unpackaged each item and took care not to scratch anything, although I know everything will be scratched from flying debris within the first hour. The fairing is packed really nice and stable. You can see that they don’t want this product to arrive damaged in any way. The windshield was packaged much the same and so was the trim and the pouch. But the mounting hardware and the deflectors were plastic wrap sandwiched to a piece of cardboard. It may just be me, but I always hate this type of packaging. It makes it too damn difficult to get of usually and if there was something wrong, then how do you re-package it? Luckily, this time around it was simply smooth. The packaging for both the mount kit and the deflectors came right off. I received extra mounting hardware (bolts, screws, etc.) and each item had a set of instructions. Kudos to Memphis Shades for all of the instructions..

The instructions were decent, but also lacking a bit. For instance, they said, “Additional tools required, that are not included in this kit. 7/16" or 11mm wrench and thin blade screwdriver to pry-up trim topper.” and what they should have said was that you need an 11mm long handle Hex Wrench. Because when they tell you to, “3. Locate and remove the two trim toppers, located on the upper triple tree. (see Figure 2)”, they mean those two huge bolts on your triple tree that need a long handle so that you have enough leverage to break the loctite that is keeping your hex wrench from moving. Otherwise, each instruction was informative and easy to follow for all parts being installed.

My thoughts after the installation

· You can do the entire installation solo, but it does help to have a buddy giving you a hard time and finally a helping hand. When you’re just about finished.
· Looks great from all angles.
· Spare bolts, caps, and screws are always nice…and yes, I did bolt everything properly. I really did have extra bolts etc.

The ride

Wow! It feels great going down the road. I did notice some wind changes from the standard windshield I had before (yea, no kidding) but these changes were really noticeable. The wind being deflected down towards my legs more so than before. The wind now shoots over my head rather than hitting my in the eyes as it was with the OEM shield. The fairing does vibrate a bit more that I thought it would, but it’s only noticeable, I think, because I was looking for negatives and positives with this install and product in general. Overall, this was a great buy and I’m really happy with it.

Total MSRP: $ 622.70