Most Overpriced Motorcycle Gear
In this video/article :
- Kuryakyn Hornet Electrical Deer Avoidance System
- Klim Adventure Rally Air
- Icon D3O Comfort Insole
- Bell Bullitt
Kuryakyn Hornet Electrical Deer Avoidance System
First up – the Kuryakyn Hornet Electrical Deer Avoidance System.
Put simply, I’m paying 150 bucks for a little chrome tube that makes an annoying sound. It’s a deer whistle, and deer whistles don’t work.
Just looking at the box, we can already tell that they’re compensating for something.
PROTECT YOURSELF, YOUR FAMILY, YOUR VEHICLE.
YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO DRIVE WITHOUT IT!
INDEPENDENTLY BETA TESTING LABS TESTED … I googled it, doesn’t seem like that lab even exists.
But THE HORNET WORKS!
Yes IT WORKS! … No it doesn’t.
IS THE HORNET A DEER WHISTLE? NO!
THE HORNET IS A SMALL ELECTRONICALLY POWERED SONIC GENERATOR WHICH PRODUCES A HIGH POWERED DIRECTIONAL SONIC WAVE … Oh so it’s a deer whistle, then.
USE THE HORNET ON ALL YOUR VEHICLES but what does that mean?
Oh now I get it … like my mini van and my semi and my motorcycle. That’s what all my vehicles means.
DON’T LET THIS HAPP... Oh that’s gross. That’s just uncalled for.
WARNING! DEER ACCIDENTS ARE ON THE RISE … ah, they’re coming for us.
GOLD MEDAL for this random dude.
PROVEN TO REDUCE THE RISK OF ANIMAL/VEHICLE COLLISION BY MORE THAN 70%
Oh wait, the fine print says that’s just an estimation. So that’s great. I always trust companies that estimate their own statistics.
At the end of the day, it’s common sense. If the deer can hear this stupid whistle, they’ve already heard my engine. The problem is that deer don’t know what to do around motorcycles and they spook easily … having a high-pitched noise maker isn’t going to change that.
Should we turn it on just for kicks? Oh f*ck that’s annoying.
Now, choosing my second piece of overpriced gear was all too easy .
Klim Adventure Rally Air
This is the Adventure Rally Air and Klim charges one thousand seven hundred dollars for it. At that price, for a mesh jacket, it would have to amaze me to avoid being on this list.
But it didn’t.
This is the perfect example of luxury lunacy. I think Klim just threw expensive shit at the Rally Air until it justified the monumental price tag but they didn’t stop and think about whether it made any sense.
Case in point – heavy duty Kevlar mesh, which costs a fortune and is nearly bulletproof. Talisman superfabric abrasion zones – which are tiny ceramic plates welded, with a laser, onto Kevlar-infused Cordura. Again, bulletproof but extremely heavy and expensive. And then CE-level two D3O back and body armour, including the chest vest which you’ll rarely find this side of MotoGP.
And what do we have now that we’ve spent our 2000 dollars? A mesh jacket that weighs a freaking tonne.
So I need this kidney belt to make the weight manageable. And between this, the chest armour, and all that Talisman superfabric … it doesn’t ventilate very well! The clever Kevlar mesh can let in as much air as it wants, that still doesn’t change the fact that half my body’s surface area is tightly wrapped underneath.
It’s absolutely hopeless. I tried to take this thing on an afternoon ride around Montreal and it sucked. First I got super hot and sweaty under the kidney belt and chest armour. So then I undid the belt, but that unleashed all 5000lbs of this jacket onto my back and shoulders, which was brutal. I can’t even imagine how heavy it would have felt if I had the hydration bladder filled up. And in the end, I swapped this jacket for a 130-dollar Fieldsheer that cost 1/13th the price, weighed half as much and flowed twice the air.
Klim – this is stupid. You set out to make the most expensive mesh jacket in the world, but you totally you neglected the one thing that makes a mesh jacket useful. Ventilation!
Icon D3O Comfort Insole
Now , my third overpriced piece of gear is this – the Icon D3O Comfort Insole.
I already went into this rant when Icon started putting D3O into the knuckles of their gloves, but I’ve gotta mention it again here.
Viscoelastic armour is not good at everything!
Yes, D3O makes exceptional knee, elbow and back shields. It’s soft and pliable against the body, but turns rigid against the hard impacts of a crash, that’s great. But I’ll see those benefits when I hit the pavement at 60 km/h.
Walking the aisles of a grocery store, not so much.
I won’t say that these insoles suck, because that’s not strictly true. They’re comfortable enough and they last longer than the drug store variety. But I don’t see the point of D3O. Whether I’m walking, running or jumping, I never notice that viscoelastic stiffening effect, or maybe I just don’t care.
Either way, this just seems like an excuse for Icon to make a 40-dollar insole and brag about their special relationship with D3O. Skip it and spend 10 bucks on Dr. Scholls – you’ll be just as happy.
Bell Bullitt
And finally, the Bell Bullitt.
Oh, he’s not going to say something bad about the beautiful Bell Bullitt, is he? Hell yes I am.
The problem with this 500-dollar piece of crap is that it wasn’t designed by Bell. What happened was, a university student named Chad Hodge drew this up as his thesis. Then he put a picture online, so the Hipsters could salivate over the desperately trendy design.
Once it looked like enough people would buy it, Bell stepped in and actually made the thing.
So what do you get when someone with next to no experience in helmet construction designs a bucket purely based on aesthetics?
You get a face shield that doesn’t seal, so it’s loud in traffic and wet in the rain. You get permanently-open vents that whistle like a tea kettle above 80km/h. You get the aerodynamics of a beach ball, which isn’t very good by the way. And you get a jawbreaker of a chin bar, which sits so close to my face that it’s basically a safety hazard.
Plus , a lot of riders have noticed that the face shield and the shell scratch each other simply by opening and closing. I haven’t noticed that yet with this bubble version, but if it is true, that’ll be the most glaring design flaw I’ve ever seen.
What’s something good I can say about this helmet? Umm, it’s pretty light. This size large tipped my scale at 1470 grams. It’s a slim construction too, although that makes the amount of wind it catches even more inexcusable. Uh what else … the field of vision is absolutely massive . I like that. Oh, and you can get a brown interior! That alone is worth 500 bucks to some people. But not to me. And that’s it for my most overpriced motorcycle gear. Thanks for watching.