If you`ve got a ten dollar head ............

rocketonarail

rocketonarail

Hero member
Location
Gloucestershire,England
............ wear a ten dollar helmet .........

That was one of Bell Helmets advertising lines back in the `seventies , when the Star was a hefty two to three times more expensive than rival brands ........ you get what you pay for , and so on ..........

Back then , a girl at work ( who rode a Yamaha 100cc two-stroke ) , questioned why I splashed out on a Bell , when her Paddy Hopkirk Agordo , which was to the same BS2495 standard , did the same job for about one quarter of the purchase price .

I explained that although the Bell met the British Standard , it also conformed to the Snell Foundation Standard ....... ( Pete Snell was an American racing driver who died as a result of head injuries back in the `fifties ..... the Foundation was set up in his name to provide a standard for racing helmets .... ) ........

Snell Foundation requirements far exceeded the British Standard ........ for example , every helmet was inspected , instead of the BS method of examining just one in a batch of fifty , and if that passed , then assuming that the remaining forty-nine in the batch would also be ok ..... thus ensuring no sub-standard helmets would slip through .

Also Snell used real live ... ( sorry , dead ) .... cadavers in their tests , not plastic dummies ..... giving much more realistic injury assessment results ..... ( that little nugget of information shut her up for a moment or two ) ......... plus the fact that racers at that time would usually ask to use Bell helmets , rather than being tempted by a fat wad of cash ........

Then there was the fact that the helmets were ( at that time ) manufactured at Norwalk , Los Angeles , which was kinda cool ( I thought ) ...... and Bruce Springsteen also appeared in a half hour long TV interview wearing a Bell T-shirt.... ( not a particular fan of Springsteen , but the T-shirt looked good ... ) .......

So all this obviously meant that the Bell was a far superior helmet , obviously ........


But ......... I recently disposed of my Arai Nakano Replica RX7-V , and was looking for a replacement . The Arai rrp was £800 quid odd at the time , although I got mine for £599 ..... bargain ! ....... but would I want to pay the equivalent of six months Council Tax on a replacement ?

I noticed a mail order shop called Ghost Bikes were offering Rocc ( Buse ) 451 helmets for £22 ............. reduced from £49 ................ so I bought one of those .... ( actually I bought two .... well at £22 each , why not ? ) .....

And they are fine ....... one was manufactured Nov 21 , the other Jan 22 , so plenty of shelf life left ....... they are ECE R 22.05 , the latest is 22.06 I believe .... but I`m not too worried about that ......

Bought cheap helmets in the past , as a spare to my " main " helmet , and some were awful ...... I remember a Bieffe R1400 ( actually sold as a Flag ) was particularly bad ........... You know that scene from Casino , where Joe Pesci and Frankie Vincent have that blokes head in a vice ? ......... well that Bieffe felt just like that after about half an hour , only much , much worse ....... and it was my usual 58 / medium size which I have always worn , and always will ......

So I`ve forgotten all my previous prejudices and gone cheap ........ Comfort is fine , it has an internal sun visor which means no more swopping from dark to clear ....... visor removal / replacement can be done in seconds , unlike the latest Arai fiddle-fest ... ( why ever did they get rid of Ad-Sis ) ....... quality and finish is fine ....... the only thing is wind noise may be slightly more obtrusive , but I`m being very picky here ......... Any way , after years of riding around with Jota silencers , if I was going to go deaf , it probably would have happened ages ago .........
 
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I went to one of the big clothing stores looking for a helmet with pricing in mind and ended up with a discounted Bell! It's a horrible colour and not very well designed in some areas but I would be amazed if it was worse in an accident than some I've had.
 
The last helmet I bought was an Arai Corsair? -X? cost me $700. I bought it after attending a MC show where Arai had a display with factory reps who helped me change around the padding segments to best fit me. So far it has been the best fitting helmet I have had. (y)(y) But I haven't crash tested it yet. 🤞
 
My first lid was a black Paddy Hopkirk Agordo full face, you had to use a 3 ton press for the pop studs on the visor and if you left the visor untethered it would flap up vertical when you looked over your shoulder! It had a nylon lining that used to make your head sweat and the visor gave you vision like a goldfish looking out of his bowl….but for £19.99 I thought I looked great! Bear in mind I was on £3.75 paper round money it was expensive. Your Bell analogy was far more appropriate back then as cheap lids were shite- even the budget helmets now are really quite good now.Back in the day, people would buy a new lid from us and leave the old one at the shop, lady from clothing used to ask us to destroy them to stop kids taking them from the bin. Big Neal who I worked with decided to take a sledgehammer to particularly nasty 60’s jet helmet, covered in stickers and covered in scratches. We all watched as he laid into into it- the hammer bounced off and shot into the air, leaving the helmet unmarked! We cut the straps off after that..
My next lid was an Owen’s Stargard that had a chin & a neck strap- must be good I thought. I rode all the way to Chingford Mountain Rd on my day off to have one made to measure. Strange man opened the door of a Dickensian looking factory and asked who had sent me??
I replied my mate Alan had one and was then accepted and let in. He measured my head with a tape and picked up a shell from the floor. He then put a contraption on my head that looked like a metal porcupine- the rods all adjusted to give a 3 d profile of my crust. He then felt my head with his fingers- eyes closed to give himself a mental picture. He then proceeded to ad strips of foam to the forehead area of the lining with Evo - stick. A bit of trial and error and we got it fitting nicely. £39 was duly handed over and I made my way back around the North circular on my GPz305! The fumes from the glue made me feel awful so I stopped to remove lid to get a breath, I continued to do this every few miles until I got home! Mad as a hatter springs to mind. I was also the first UK importer of Roof Boxer helmets…
 
My first full face helmet was an Owens ....... a Masterguard Dome which I purchased in 1973 ........ no special fitting though , I think it must have arrived through the post , can`t remember for sure ......

As you say , I thought I looked great at the time wearing it ........ definitely a novelty back then ....... I remember pulling into a filling station on my CB250 K4 wearing it .... there was a stuffy looking old biddy in the passenger seat of the car in front , which was facing me ........

The look on her face was a picture ........ any one would have thought I`d just stepped off the last shuttle service from Mars ....... :) .............
 
They used to have helmet smashing competitions at the old BMF Rallys .......... blokes with sledgehammers ....... never saw this myself ...... ( although I went to the Rallys ) ...... , but remember seeing pics in the magazines ....... not sure how successful they were .

I always cut the straps , and scoop out the linings of my old helmets , and then take them to the re cycling tip .
 
My first full face bought in 78 was a Nolan. Obviously I ditched the perfectly good clear visor for a dangerously tinted and scratched Bob Heath almost immediatly. Good thing about the Nolan was that as you turned your head to do the old ' life saver' the visor would fly open in the wind to give you a sudden burst of clear vision just at the right moment before crashing back down as you looked forward again. Very clever design .
 
I have a photochromic visor on my full face.
€200. Expensive but the best investment in a long time.
Full sunshine, into a tunnel and out again. Instantly reactive.
Much better than a sun visor, not to mention tinted, which I used for years.
Paul
 
Perry said:
My first full face bought in 78 was a Nolan. Obviously I ditched the perfectly good clear visor for a dangerously tinted and scratched Bob Heath almost immediatly. Good thing about the Nolan was that as you turned your head to do the old ' life saver' the visor would fly open in the wind to give you a sudden burst of clear vision just at the right moment before crashing back down as you looked forward again. Very clever design .
Click to expand...
What happened to Nolan, Stadium, Centurion? Oh yeah, they were shite! 😂 Bob heath made a bomb from anti scratch visors when the law changed in the late eighties- he was on the committee that promoted the anti scratch visors and also had the only factory making them!🤔
I always fancied a metal flake Kangol in the Kay’s catalogue…when I wasn’t looking at the bra section…
 
My first helmet was a Paddy Hopkirk Agordo full face in Blue metalflake brought from Halfords and stored in my wardrobe for about 6 months before I could afford my first bike which was a Purple FS1E brought for £30!......first project I guess.
Had the tinted visor for a while before going down the mirrored route which became the craze amongst our group and which I thought was oh so cool. We used the left over Mirrored film from a mates Mk 1 Cortina after we mirrored his rear windscreen!......looked great even though it picked up a bit of dust and dirt prior to application! :unsure::ROFLMAO:

Then I progressed onto the Bell Mk 1 which I purchased along with a few others form a chap who worked at the factory and was selling off brand new items with minor paint defects for £10 each an absolute bargain and was kept for a good few years,.......that was White with a dark tinted visor.
Happy times and memories for life.
 
I bought my first full-face in '74. It wasn't anything special, I just remember that it was red (far left):

49937677697_7e6ca7eb1a_c.jpg




My 2nd was an AGV "Ago" made of fiberglass, and I still like the shape today. I bought two of them, one for myself and one for my girlfriend at the time (who's just learning to ride here):

49439544176_fa481e43e2_c.jpg




Then came a Shoei (not for my head) and several Arais. Nolan is still on the market – guess x-lite is part of this group (which I use nowadays).
 
Having had to just fork out another big wad of cash to buy yet another helmet that meets the FIM standard, which isn’t much different to any other, but a slightly higher number of helmets are tested, I tend to feel we are getting ripped off by certain helmet manufacturers who are taking advantage of the ‘rules’. I could have bought another half decent bike for the price I have paid for the three new helmets I have acquired this year.
I certainly agree that many less expensive helmets will offer virtually the same protection as their ultra expensive’cousins’, so to me it comes down to comfort and fit etc.
 
I,ve always used Arai or Shoei, but years ago one of the American cycle mags did a test of both high end and lower end helmets that measured the impact from a fallen weight, and somehow measured the resulting impact it would have on a human brain. I don,t recall the specifics, but their conclusion was that a cheaper helmet that cracked resulted in less vibration and shock to a brain, and that the better and stronger helmets that didn’t crack gave more vibration and damage to the brain. I don,t know what to make of this and continue w Arai and Shoei. Our brains are suspended in fluid within the cranium, so I don,t understand how a cheap or expensive helmet can limit the vibration and shock to the brain upon sudden impact. And all helmets are constructed the same with a poly foam base covered in a hard plastic.

One thing I,m sceptical of is the claimed age limits since unless the helmet has been subjected to non stop sun and extreme weather, I fail to see how the helmet material would deteriorate or degrade. But I could be wrong about all of this.
 
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back when I had my first Bell (with Snell), cheap helmets were polycarbonate and expensive ones were fibreglass (or some sort of composite), The word was that the FG would take an initial impact and absorb it by the deformation of the material while the cheapo poly ones offered no impact absorption because they were basically unbreakable. Whether it's true or not i don't know.

What I do know is that the ACU introduced mandatory AS/NZ (Australian/NZ) standards and if you didn't have the sticker you couldn't race. i was outraged that my fancy Bell was not allowed to be used; no AS sticker but Snell approved. I had to grab my boss's cheap poly to get through scrutineering - I then went back to the pits and put my bell back on! I also don't buy the age limit thing - properly stored away from heat and UV I can't see a helmet deteriorating to the point of being dangerous.
 
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