Oooh, fairings!

I have a Zipper in the garage somewhere, pretty neat piece of kit. I never rode fast enough to find much aero advantage, wound up using it mostly to keep the cold away on winter commutes. It does squirm about and make noise over bumps. I never had a problem in crosswinds, but didn't tend to ride through storms. I think it attempts to smooth the airflow around the rider, so the height is right. I wouldn't have to tuck very far down to hear the wind noise drop. Is this still in production, maybe primarily for recombents?

The brake lever mounts make the lever bodies wider, fer sure, and on rough roads the mounts could creep forward/upward, wanting to self-eject. You can bend the mounts fore/aft slightly to adjust fairing profile/tilt. The mounts attach to the fairing with plastic pop-rivet thingies, not too hard to remove. I don't remember if there was a third set of holes allowing height positioning options, or if that was something I considered adding myself. I'd get small stress fracture cracks radiating outward from the mounting holes, but this never seemed to cause any problems. The black rubber edge trim was a friction fit, and over time it would stretch/loosen and not hold the edge well. I'd see this in small sections, the whole thing didn't leave, just 2-3" sections at random spots would loosen and lift a bit.

The black fairing with separate screen that repechage mentioned wasn't a Zipper, IIRC, it was called The Edge. Different product, different mfr. It was molded like a "real" fairing from opaque black plastic, and mounted with internal struts that would somehow attach to the brake lever body. It was much heavier than the Zipper and looked like something out of Batman. I had to have one since it was so over-the-top and kinda goofy. During my brazing period I modified a Bertin frame/fork (bought from the Fraysee's Park Cylde) with a bunch of surface-brazed bottle bosses to use for Edge fairing mounts. I had the gel cell for my Ed Kearney light stored inside the Edge, and I wired switches into 35mm film canisters (one of three approved uses for film canisters, the main one being storing film and the third I won't mention...) and mounted those in the Edge wheel well. Definitely helped keep me warmer during winter commutes, and nobody knew what to make of it.

The Edge mounted much lower, you'd have to tuck pretty significantly to get fairly full body coverage.

Both of these product cropped up '80-'82, then kinda vanished. I don't know if either had any wind-tunnel testing, don't recall any numbers/stats being mentioned in ad literature or spec sheets.

I have a photo somewhere of my Edge-equipped commuter, not likely to surface without a significant search. I'll post it if it pops up, though.