Re: £16 Helmet on Ebay
 

[QUOTE=


they will know the construction and tests, and the features of it, as a car salesman knows about the airbags in a car. but its all public......

Off to bed :)[/QUOTE]
At the end of the day Nitro are considered a budget helmet search ebay for nitro helmet and the most expensive one is £165

Re: £16 Helmet on Ebay
 

MY chipped helmet had this clain from HJC & it cost me £85

These helmets are to the same GOLD ACU standard as a £400+ Arai or Shoei

Re: £16 Helmet on Ebay
 

i love the helmet arguement, recently looked at the test ratings of my caberg vs the missus shoei costing over double the price guess which came out on top,

lozzo i must say im not in the least bit surprised you have a wealth of knowladge on helmets if you were a sales rep but im very surprised and somewhat frightend that they invited a sales reps input on design and construction, surely things like this are down to designers and engineers?
please dont take this as another bit of keyboard heroism but with over 2.5k members from all walks of life i find it somewhat big headed to assume your the only one quallified to make professional calls on these matters, and weather your qualified is irrelevent if that was the case none of us would take advice on how to repair our bikes from anybody but suzuki trained technicians?

edit: people thinking along the same lines as me in the time it took me to post, and it seems youve aalready replied

Re: £16 Helmet on Ebay
 

Does that make it a bad helmet?

Re: £16 Helmet on Ebay
 

+1, although I understood it to mean they were invited to make suggestions on design features and aesthetics that might sell a helmet, and then constrained by the engineers who knew what would and wouldn't work.

In any case, I don't doubt that I could eventually whack together a helemt in my garage that would meet the standards, but it'd still be crap, heavy, poor fitting, inadequate venting, noisy, and made from budget materials. I do believe that a light, comfortable, quiet helmet goes a long ways towards safety in terms of minimising fatigue and enabling maximum concentration.

I buy name brand helmets in solid colours, becuase that's where I think I get the best bang for my buck. I do believe that spending a bit more, while being critical about what you're buying, provides you the benefit of a bit more research into safety, more comfort, and better materials.

What's the cost to Nitro of designing and manufacturing and tooling for a lid that has a full retail price of £80? £20 out the factory door? Less? Have they stumbled upon some miracle of cost control, or are we to believe that the major brands are in a price-fixing scam? Maybe Nitro is spending a little less in these areas. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle, but I'd personally rather gamble on spending a bit more.

Is it somewhat telling that the Nitro sales-rep wears Arais, except where convenience is concerned, and then chooses a Nitro because it has a flip front and fits a headset -both safety compromises?

Re: £16 Helmet on Ebay
 

Three years ago I highsided a Bandit 600 and did some aerial acrobatics at a height of 10 to 12 feet above ground - at some point as I headed back to planet earth my head struck something solid. My helmet was written off but I hobbled away with a broken ankle (surprisingly, I was wearing Alpinestars MX boots, which I thought would have saved my ankle). The helmet I was wearing was a Nitro N1400. I trust Nitros.

There was once a bike racer called Joey Dunlop, he wore an Arai RX-7 Corsair - he's now dead after hitting a tree. That doesn't mean to say I distrust Arais, it simply goes to show that no matter what helmet you wear, the worst can still happen.

Re: £16 Helmet on Ebay
 

So why do you now wear Arai

Re: £16 Helmet on Ebay
 

Was that due to a head injury?

Re: £16 Helmet on Ebay
 

I work for a parcel delivery company who drive red vans and might be connected to the Post Office/Royal Mail. Personally I wouldn't wear a £1000 helmet that had been sent through the post. However if you buy one from a shop you still don't know what has happened to it before purchase so there is always some risk involved. Additionally you can't sue a lid shop for a defective helmet when you're dead. Maybe the only sure way is to always have it tested after purchase for another 60 or 70 quid or whatever it costs.
I bought an AGV GP Tech(reduced to £440) at the same time I got my bike (what's good enough for a pro racer is good enough for an inexperienced road rider like me). Although I could only afford it because of the loan I got for the bike. Previously I had a noisy £60 Takai helmet - no not Takachi and no not Arai. Never seen that brand name before and never seen it since. I wonder if it was bits of Takachi and Arai helmets that had been prit-sticked together and resprayed. If I had to get a new now I would struggle to pay more than a couple of hundred quid tops.
Interesting point made earlier in this thread about about what value we put on our heads: Even £500 isn't alot when you consider what's at stake.
A mate of mine came off with a £160 lid and when his head bounced off the curb it split in 2 along the glue line of the 2 hemispheres. He's still alive so it did its job but who knows what might have been if he was going a bit faster or landed at a different angle or this or that or the other or...
£16 does seem ridiculously cheap but the daft thing is they might sell more if they charged alot more for exactly the same helmet based on our fears about price and quality.
I think the way forward (right on my soap-box now) is to specifically state how much impact force a lid will take rather than a simple yes or no to whether it's up to the EU gold standard.

Re: £16 Helmet on Ebay
 

Why is that? Apart from the fact that Rossi's is almost certainly not an off the shelf model built the same as yours his does not have the prospect of the same number of hazards as a road helmet does - There is not as many things to hit on a race track.

I'm surprised about the 'splitting down the glue line' incident, I though the shells of most helmets were molded in one piece and the 'glue line' was infact the joint of the mold, not like a cream egg. Perhaps not all helmets are created equal, maybe I'd like to know more about how my helmet was made before I make a purchase.

I'd not worry too much about impacts in transit, it will have protection presumably. What damages a helmet is impact while carrying a load inside such as a heavy skull and it's contents after this the all important shock absorbing foam will be useless even if the shell is perfectly serviceable.

Having paid top dollar for your helmet how long will you be tempted to keep it? Perhaps it would be better to pay half as much and replace twice as often.