Zero-Gravity Touring Windscreen
for the 2001 Suzuki Bandit

By Rick Williams (coinspinner12)

I had a chance to do a nice day ride this past weekend, letting me put this prototype Zero-Gravity touring screen to the test for the first time since installing it.

Let's cut to the chase.... This screen, which is about 4 inches taller than the stocker, makes the bike more enjoyable to ride. Gone is the wind pressure on your shoulders, meaning you can relax your grip on the bars, and just sit back and enjoy the ride. The screen seems only marginally wider than the stocker, but the ZG's taller shape cuts a better swath through northern California's pollen-infested air. I did a 140-mile freeway jaunt, hovering at 80 mph the whole way, and I kept thinking about how I did not miss the shorter stock screen throughout the ride.

High-speed rides like that also make me wonder how owners of the naked Bandits deal with the freeway! Must be a white-knuckled ride that requires plenty of grip squeezing to keep from blowing off your Bandit steed. But I digress. With the stock screen, I received steady pressure on both shoulders that never went away. The airflow to my head was clean with the stock screen, but the shoulder pressure kinda bothered me after awhile. It was still a comfortable bike, now it's more comfortable.

But what about head-buffeting? I've had taller aftermarket screens on many of my previous machines, all of which kept the air off the body better but a few focused the wind blast directly into my face/forehead, and that caused massive head-buffeting. This means you get very tired neck-muscles after a while, as you have to tense up your neck muscles just to hold your head still. On a long ride, this gets painful after a couple hours. I'm happy to report that my 5-foot-9 frame found no head-buffeting to report. The ride seemed a tad noisier with the taller screen, but my neck muscles were able to take the day off. This was the area that I was most worried about coming into this review, so I was mighty glad I had no complaints about head-buffeting.

I even slowly rose up on the pegs to put my head higher and impersonate a taller rider, I still didn't find any head-buffeting. I guess the ZG's shape is such that the windblast if spread over a large area, instead of focusing on your forehead like a SWAT-team's laser targeter. This is a good thing. I also hunched down to mimic a Bandit dwarf, in this stance the wind noise totally disappeared.

As for fit and finish, the ZG screen is eye candy. It has a deep dark tint that I liked, and didn't look so much like it rolled off a cookie-cutter assembly line like the stock screen. There were some slight distortions on the ZG screen near where the screen does an outer curve on its way past the mirror-mounting points, but these didn't bother me. If you're looking through the screen in that area, you've got other problems to worry about anyway, such as buying new fairing-stays.

Installation was easy, no different than the stock screen. This may seem like no big deal to you, but take it from someone who has replaced many stock parts with aftermarket pieces, and most of the time the new piece did NOT go on as easily as the stocker. Just be careful when sliding the "V" on the Bandit's nose down during removal, those tabs are flimsy and won't stand up to any real force (just ask Griff). The best technique is to remove both mirrors and the V's bolts, then pull out on the top edge of the V until both sides pop out slightly. Then slide the whole V down a half-inch or so until the tabs come down out of their little resting place inside your painted cowling uppers (much easier to do if you have a second pair of hands helping you).

With no advance warning of those tabs' downward-traveling removal path, I fear that many owner of the new B12 and B6 will be snapping off those tabs. Consider yourself warned.... Overall, the ZG touring screen is a nice addition, and one I would easily recommend. It looks better than the stock screen, and it functions better than the stock screen. Not much more you can ask for.

Rick, Maximum-Suzuki.com

Any speeds mentioned in this article which are above the legal speed limit, are complete fabrications, and the author is obviously lying.