So after reading thread after thread about the various vendors and options for an aftermarket fairing for my Road King, I've decided to go with Woody's. I looked at them all. And I really wanted to go with a supplier that could ship me an assembled, painted fairing. But in the end, Woody's reputation for quality, support and price swayed me. I've read good things about the other vendors. And plenty of dissatisfied folks, too. But from HDF (and elsewhere) I've heard nothing but positive about the fit, finish and quality of Woody's fairings. Those references, coupled with his competitive price and customer support, swayed me.

He and I have been emailing for over a week now and my experience with his customer support so far has been as positive as everyone on HDF has said: He has patiently answered all of my questions. And has has responded to all of my emails within about a day.

My bike is a black cherry RK Custom, which has the black bags. So I'm going to get the outer faring painted and leave the inner fairing black gel coat. The two tone should look fine - and in fact, most stock Harley's come with black inners anyway, unless you pay for the colormatch inner. That saves me a few bucks on painting and also allows me to have Glenn assemble it all before sending it to me. I could definitely do the assembly, but it's a time saver.

Here are few examples of the color scheme I'm going for. Since I just ordered my fairing, these aren't my bike. They are for representation of the color scheme only.

I plan for this to be an on-going thread, which I'll update as things happen. For example, I'll post later with a description of the audio I decided on and why, so that it might help someone else figure out what they might want to do with their audio.

 

I would really like to do the built fairing, but for how little I ride anymore, it's not worth it for me.

I also want a 21" front and 14" apes.... But, again, not really worth it.

Post pics when it's mounted

 

Looking forward to the build . I have a 2013 Road king and been thinking of doing the same thing.

Following

 

Don't want to get into this fairing vs that, just want to state That I can go from fully dressed to stripped down and in between in 20 minutes. It's all depends on the ride.

 

Wow that is one sweet ride!

 

Sweet ride, ericl! But then, I'm partial to the black cherry color!

No, I don't want to get into a "best" fairing discussion either. There are plenty of them on here. Woody's is detachable in just a few minutes, so - like for you - that was also a factor for me.

Here's where the discussion might turn into a debate. The audio selections. I hope not. Again, I'm only sharing my decisions to help others with their decision making.

I chose to go with the Infinity PRV-250 Bluetooth marine head unit, with an Apline KTP-445U amp driving four Polk DB521 speakers.

For the head unit, my needs were Bluetooth connectivity, iPhone connectivity and radio. Yes, I like to have radio. CD wasn't needed and I don't need a bunch of presets. And I also wanted buttons that I might have an outside chance of being able to press while wearing gloves. This unit is a marine-grade unit, so weather isn't a factor. And it has the connectivity I wanted. It seemed to have decent reviews on these forums and on shopping sites.

The PRV has the additional benefit of having a very shallow panel depth. That is, it didn't protrude INTO the fairing far at all. Many digital media head units are omitting the CD player these days, and that reduces the depth into the fairing that they go. This unit is one of the shallower. In the Woody's fairing, space inside the fairing for an amp is at a premium. You'll find threads on HDF that show how to mount amps inside with a convention head unit, but it's not easy. I opted for simplicity. I got a decent head unit with enough room inside the fairing for the amp.

One other "nice to have" for the head unit would be a path to add SiriusXM connectivity. The PRV-250 doesn't have that. But there's a PRV-350 on the horizon (should be released in 2015, I've heard) that fits into the same opening as the 250, brings a nicer screen and is SiriusXM ready. So should I want to add that at some point, I haven't boxed myself into a corner with my head unit choice.

At the present time, I don't have plans for lower fairings for this bike. Or for saddlebag speakers. So in an amp, I focused on driving just the 4 speakers in the fairing. If I were looking at lower fairing speakers or driving bag speakers, I may have chosen a different amp than I did. When you're selecting an amp, try to understand the scope of your project and what your future needs will/might be. You might want spend a little more now, if you expect to add more speakers later.

The amp I chose is the Alpine. It's small, has enough power for my speakers (but not too much) and has great reviews. In terms of performance for the dollar, it seemed like one of the better choices for bike audio. I looked at the Rockford Forsgate amps. They looked great, too. They were a little more money and offered a lot more power. They would not have played nicely at high power with the speakers I chose. I looked at several others, too. But in the selection of the amp, I wasn't just choosing the amp, I was choosing an amp/speaker combination. This amp is small, at a reasonable cost, simple connectivity and has the appropriate power for my setup.

I looked at lots of 5-1/2" speakers. One of the main questions limiting speaker options in Woody's fairing is the dimension of the exterior speaker grill/cover. If that diameter is more than about 6.1", the speakers won't fit. You'd be surprised (I was) how many 5-1/2" speakers that rules out! The Polk DB521 aren't Woody's "stock" speakers. But he recommend them as an upgrade and said a lot of his customers opted for them. There are some strong opinions on them on HDF, but overall they appear to be well regarded. They are marine speakers, which is nice. And at 45W RMS, they match the amp perfectly (4 ch at 45W RMS each).

I looked at several speaker options. One that got great reviews on HDF were the Kicker CS05s. Unfortunately, they wouldn't fit. And I looked at the Polk MM521's - much higher power than the DB521's. I was seriously considering them with the RF 300x4 amp. That would be a very nice setup, too. But they would just barely fit, side to side, and I decided the aesthetics of that might look cramped. Further, with external crossovers for those speakers, the connectivity was more complex than I thought necessary. I'm not looking for a supreme sound system on this bike, just some nice tunes on the road. Plus, that combo would have added maybe $200 to the cost of the system. Cost vs performance is always a trade-off, isn't it?

I've ordered the components and expect them this week. I'll be painting the silver speaker grills black to better match the black inner failing and the bike's color scheme.

So there's my sound system and my thought process. Even if you don't like my choices, I think my reasoning is (pardon the pun) sound.

 

I had chosen the DXi525 speakers. I liked the more conservative look. I do not know what the current equivalent is. I sent the speakers direct to Glen to install ahead of time.


I have the Alpine amp as well, but I have to admit that I really don't perceive such a great difference between using the JVC mech-less head unit with the Alpine amp compared to my original setup with a Sony CD head unit at 20W RMS. I know that sounds odd, but the reality is that, when you tune the Alpine to your system, you will see that you will likely have the gain dialed pretty far back to avoid clipping at 75% volume level. There is no doubt that the system is a bit louder in my driveway, but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference at 70mph, lol. I was just never blown away by the change to the amp.


The Alpine seems to be about your only choice....I cant see how you could fit anything else in there. I'd actually like to get better speakers that use a crossover, but I don't think there is room in there to put the crossovers anywhere without interfering with the fit between the two halves of the fairing.

 

Well THAT doesn't give me confidence! Ha ha. No worries. Most of my riding is under 70MPH anyway. I'll have a look when it comes and the outer is being painted, to see if I could get other speakers in there (with crossovers). If so, I could go to the RF amp. But for now, I'm going for "good enough" at a decent price. My Someday Bike will have a few more bells and whistles.

 

a lot has to do with the size of the windshield you run, when running fully dressed I use a 15" windshield, I have to look through, it does wonders for the wind noise, the majority of the time it has a 6.5" klockwerks. It takes a lot of power to run with a windshield you look over.

 

And by the way scooper I always thought the custom was the best looking bike on the show room floor with the beach bars and the lowered *** end