Fairing Fever!

In his penultimate piece on the RC374, our Allen gets on with the fairing.

- Allen Millyard

They say variety is the spice of life, and it certainly is for me regarding my motorcycles, as I like all styles and sizes of bikes. While at Stafford show with my recently completed Honda RC374, back in October, I found myself drawn to the Velocette parts stand nearby and began thinking about my relatively standard 1950 Velocette 350 Mac in my shed back at home.

My RC374 and Velocette Mac are two completely different bikes that are light years apart in design and technical complexity. Anyway this got me thinking,

“Why have I got a standard Velocette Mac? Maybe I should make it into a 50º V twin?” I spent a bit of time talking to Patrick on the Velocette parts stand and noticed that he had a complete top-end for a Mac for sale. I bought it on a whim and I have since been totally absorbed in converting my Velocette 350 Mac into a 700cc 50º V-Twin, maybe I will talk about that in a later edition if it proves to be of interest to CMM readers.

Back to my RC374 and the next job, the fairing: Honda only made two 297cc RC174 sixes and they both were fitted with glass fibre fairings but I like the look and feel of the hand beaten aluminium fairings that were fitted to earlier Honda racers. My RC374 was not striving to be an exact replica so I decided to make the fairing from aluminium.

For me aluminium is a lot nicer material to work with, no smelly resin and no itchy strands of glass to deal with, also it’s easier for me to fix if I get a dent. I bought a sheet of 1.6mm 1050 grade half hard aluminium, which is easy to cut with tin snips. I had been looking at the photos in my book and decided that the best way to make the fairing was in three bits and then weld them together.