[Video Transcript]
Hello! I’m RyanF9 and today we crash test a very modular helmet.
So this is the Nolan N44. It’s Italian and it costs 400 dollars, which is not bad considering you get six helmets. Full face, MX, jet helmet, open face, open face with a sun peak, and full face with no shield . But what is the cost of that versatility? FortNine’s nine torture tests are about to find out.
Nolan will be wearing its full face outfit for the day’s events. Partly because it’s the “safest” configuration, and partly because it’s the only configuration that won’t get me soaked in the waterproofing test. Speaking of which, Nolan used about a quarter mile of rubber gasket – all the way around here – to seal the face shield shut . Should handle SeaWorld just fine.
Per favore!
Grazie.
So that went well! The face shield sealed beautifully, the vent stoppers did their jobs… Bravo . On to soundproofing then.
No way in hell we’re going to see a passing grade here. The N44 is notoriously loud because Nolan decided to build two wind tunnels on top of my head. They’re meant to accelerate jets of air on either side of this main exhaust, because high airflow means low pressure, meaning lots of hot air gets sucked out of here. In theory, that’s great. In reality, it sounds like you’re living inside a turbine. As always we have a fan to approximate wind noise, and something suitably Italian to approximate road noise… Andiamo!
So our decibel meter peaked at 107 decibels outside the helmet and 99 decibels inside the helmet. That means the N44 cancelled 8 decibels, which is not actually that bad but the dividing line is still set at 10. Merda to Nolan.
Welcome to Rambo’s Corner – probably my favourite place in the FortNine lab because this is where I get to shoot stuff. Today’s ammunition is the penetrating pellet, shot at my typical cruising speed of 550km/h. So far every face shield we’ve tested has taken four shots to break through. The benchmark for the shell is 3 and for the sun visor… well there is no metric. We shoot sun visors for shits and giggles.
So very boring! It took only four shots through the visor, just like any other helmet. That's a passing grade . Time to set my sights on the shell.
Holy Moly! 9 shots to hit the EPS foam – not the most exciting thing to watch. It’s always more fun to see something fail dramatically isn’t it? Perhaps shooting the sun visor will cheer me up.
Not quite through in 2 shots. The sun visor is gonna do just about as well as any sun visor! How irksome.
A tiny little in the visor...in 3 shots.
So the N44 has perfectly competent visor and puncture strength – nothing ground breaking there. Next is impact protection, which promises to be more of a wildcard.
I really don’t know what to expect here … Nolan has a great reputation for safety but then again, this ain’t their most safety-conscious design… from the outside it all looks good and on the inside, that is a passing grade for side impact.
I would expected this to pass . You see this a lot with helmets that tend to the long side of oval. Pretty thin and weak on the sides, much stronger around back. A little look on the inside... and i would be totally wrong about that. That more than a 100Gs. That would be a Failing Grade.
On that top impact we busted out the visor and we also lost part of the mechanism out of the bottom of the shell but were those the only things that we broke? Let's have a look. Ah yes, passing grade. We did not break the head.
So passing 2 out of 3 impact zones is good enough for an overall “Check mark.” Next is abrasion resistance, where we have asphalt-esque 40 grit spinning at 19km/h. Anything that lasts over a minute is passing grade.
So , 1min11s to reach the EPS layer is pretty damn good. I was initially miffed with Nolan for putting a polycarb shell on this helmet … for 400 bucks you’d at least expect fiberglass. But it seems that Nolan did cast the polycarb thick so hey, credit where credit’s due.
There. That’s where credit’s due.
Now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for – chin bar strength. The N44 was made famous for its enormous field of view, but the flip side of having all that real estate on the face shield… is that you get a teeny-tiny chin bar . It’s thin, it’s dinky, it’s detachable…
So the detachable chin bar definitely detached on one side but this remarkable guys. I was expecting this to fail dramatically. I mean holy hell! There is no damage whatsoever on this watermelon. I mean the chin bar absorbed absolutely all of the impact. That's insane!
I don't really know what to say. This is by far and away the biggest surprise we've ever seen on Fortnine Crash Test. To be totally honest with you guys, I put an N44 in in one of these episode because i thought the chin bar would fail spectacularly and that it would be fun to watch but it turns out this did really well! Better than modular and full face helmets that we've tested. I don't really understand how but top notch Nolan. That's gonna be a passing grade for chin bar strength.
Alright, let’s burn some shit and wrap this test up… not exactly the cooling effect they were designed for…
So the Nolan wasn’t very heat resistant. Normally the outer finish of shell takes a bit more time to melt and we don't see that very often so that's gonna be a failing grade. That brings us to FortNine’s ninth test – build quality – where we ask the question what still works. And on the Nolan…
- Vents
- Quick release visor
- Sun shield (two detente, retracts like ninja putting away sword)
- Face shield (two detente)
- Chin bar release
- Ratchet strap
At the end of the day, the face shield still opens and closes. Still attached on both anchor points. Very impressive. The big story for today obviously is the chin bar. This thing took a full golf swing and kept all of that impact off the watermelon and still operates the way it should. Obviously it's gutted and burnout but even still that's highly impressive and just based on that chin bar still working , that’s a passing grade for build quality.
Now at this point we’d normally tally the successes – one, two, three, four, five of them – and give the N44 a grade out of nine. But alas , some of our suppliers have been getting pissed about us putting a number on their helmets. So from now on, everyone gets a nine…
A FortNine, that is. The N44 gets seven of them , which is rather good. Much better than the garbage Biltwell Gringo, which only got three nines. And a little worse than the Shoei Neotec, which got six nines .
Now is that a diplomatic scoring system or what? I’m sure our suppliers will find us beyond reproach . Next week we’re tackling the age-old question of riding shoes – serious safety equipment, or foolish fashion? If you don’t want to miss seeing Alpinestars on the chopping block, consider subscribing. Until then, thank you very much for watching, take care!