• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Helmet Recommendations

bud7041 said:
Has anyone brought the Husqvarna helmet or know anything about them.
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The older ones (blue and black in color) were made by AGV and one lasted me for yrs ...

Not sure about the new ones in the parts catalog but if it is AGV, it should be OK ... I'd like to buy one of the white and red ones but I'm about sure that fancy paint job and the Husqvarna brand name on it drives the price upward ...
 
Mike-AK said:
To recap what I have read so far:

Plastic = Questionable
Fiberglass = Very Good
Kevlar = Great

I went with fiberglass. Only marginally less strong than Kevlar. Kevlar does have a higher tensile strength, but because of that, manufacturers tend to use less of it to build a product equivalent in strength to a 'glass helmet. The only real tradeoff appears to be weight.
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That shell lightens the load but does not save your life in a bigger size crash ... That inner ice-box looking foam is what adds the needed cushion to protect the ears and what's between them ... It also stays crushed when it takes a big hit ... This is why after a crash of major size, helmets need to be replaced ...

I've never read where a helmet is gonna save you after ~30mph so best be ready to brake or jump or both ... Keep the FB lever covered for that additional moment of braking that make make the difference between life or death .
 
ray_ray said:
That shell lightens the load but does not save your life in a bigger size crash ... That inner ice-box looking foam is what adds the needed cushion to protect the ears and what's between them ... It also stays crushed when it takes a big hit ... This is why after a crash of major size, helmets need to be replaced ...
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Couldn't agree more. Last August I washed out at 60mph and I crushed the foam in my Arai vx pro. The inner foam was permanently crushed, only a slight scratch on the outside. I may of lost my $600 dollar helmet, but I walked away with my life.
 
Tinken said:
Couldn't agree more. Last August I washed out at 60mph and I crushed the foam in my Arai vx pro. The inner foam was permanently crushed, only a slight scratch on the outside. I may of lost my $600 dollar helmet, but I walked away with my life.
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Guys,
I got no dog in this hunt but ....what Tinken said....back in o06 on the street I had a get off lost all my gear plus Arai RX7...but I too walked away with my life, I do want to see one those new XD4 Diamante in red n white ....
 
Years ago (mid 80's) I used to finance a manufacturer of plastic injection molded helmets that were sold in Kmarts and Walmarts across the country. The manufacturer was always trying to compare the safety of his helmets vs the fiberglass helmets. The difference was that the fiberglass helmets would absorb and spread out the impact, where the plastic helmets would rebound from the impact and neck injuries were greater as a result. I've bought Arai helmets ever since then.
 
Tinken said:
Couldn't agree more. Last August I washed out at 60mph and I crushed the foam in my Arai vx pro. The inner foam was permanently crushed, only a slight scratch on the outside. I may of lost my $600 dollar helmet, but I walked away with my life.
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That's a real life reason to stick with what you were wearing ... So you hit on pavement or dirt?

--

Here's an issue that can be easily proven on the overall quality of helmets ... Has nothing to do with saving your life in most cases I'd guess ...

The more expensive ones are just gonna last longer ... Or, maybe the less expensive ones may not last as long ... you can see the d-rings are rusted and a pain to strap to my melon ... This helmet is only about a yr old and this rust showed up way to quickly in the life of this rig ...

101_0067.JPG
 
Ray what helmet is that? My Arai sat in a barn for years and didn't look like that. Even my cheap helmets haven't done that
 
LandofMotards said:
Ray what helmet is that? My Arai sat in a barn for years and didn't look like that. Even my cheap helmets haven't done that
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I hate to ID this helmet company as it seems OK other than this issue ... Its just an example of the products used with different helmets... I don't think it is a safety issue unless it prohibits strapping it on tightly ... I'll just say the first letter in its name is an A and the cost is right right under $100.00 ...The AGVs I have do not have this issue but the cost is about double ...
 
Mike-AK said:
It didn't sit in a barn for years in the PI. Everything rusts there.
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There are super-duper rust monsters here ... That little truck I show pics of is rusting into parts .. frame included ...

Here is a pic of my old AGV Husqvarna helmet, purchased from BMP in 03 along with my 02 CR250 ... Its been here lots longer than that other helmet ...Its getting trashed-out inside now, but I still wear it as needed ..

101_0068.JPG


My helmets' insides' are getting washed 2-3 times a week, many weeks, and that inside materiel and design has to be good also or it will wear out from just cleaning it ...

I'm using this spray stuff also to help hold off the tearing-out and cleaning of the guts of my helmets ...
100_0038.JPG
 
ray_ray said:
That's a real life reason to stick with what you were wearing ... So you hit on pavement or dirt?
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I couldn't afford another Arai, the Fox V4 is a good helmet though. It was in the dirt, CORE race track, first ride out on my TE511. I hit a soft bank and the bike literally stopped, 60 to 0 instantly. I had little stars and tweety birds circling my head and I couldn't find my bike.
 
Tinken said:
Couldn't agree more. Last August I washed out at 60mph and I crushed the foam in my Arai vx pro. The inner foam was permanently crushed, only a slight scratch on the outside. I may of lost my $600 dollar helmet, but I walked away with my life.
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We have been using the Kali helmets this year, superlight and fit great. Mark did a hard endo in the desert a few weeks ago which crushed the inner forehead foam and ripped off the visor, but otherwise left the exterior looking pretty nice. Mark was momentarily dazed but got back up and charged after the pack. That helmet has been sacrificed to the dirt riding gods and replaced with the same model.
 
I've heard some really great things about Kali. I think it's called Airoh, they are supposed to be another good one
 
oregonsage said:
We have been using the Kali helmets this year, superlight and fit great. Mark did a hard endo in the desert a few weeks ago which crushed the inner forehead foam and ripped off the visor, but otherwise left the exterior looking pretty nice. Mark was momentarily dazed but got back up and charged after the pack. That helmet has been sacrificed to the dirt riding gods and replaced with the same model.
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Tinken said:
I couldn't afford another Arai, the Fox V4 is a good helmet though. It was in the dirt, CORE race track, first ride out on my TE511. I hit a soft bank and the bike literally stopped, 60 to 0 instantly. I had little stars and tweety birds circling my head and I couldn't find my bike.
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You guys are proving the system works ...

I'm back there in the pack somewhere with the paint chipping and helmet scratching riders :0)
 
FWIW I have found that two helmets are sometimes needed as the better Enduro helmet I have doesn't allow for glasses or shades to be worn if doing a road trip down town where goggles just block the peripheral vision too much. I have an AGV which is convenient to throw on with a pair of sunglasses if I'm just blatting about the place, but for *proper* off-road Enduro stuff, I can't recommend highly enough that you consider getting a ProGrip Enduro/MX helmet.

Being in the ass end of the European part of the world, I opted for a supplier from a popular online auction site who does a cool plain white ProGrip Enduro helmet (the one with a big letter 'P' in black along the jawline of the lid) for about GBP135. I'm sure you yanks can probably find more local suppliers to give you a better deal on the dollar. I was immensely impressed when it arrived to find just how much lighter it felt when worn, how much better it fit around the head with a firm, yet comfortable degree of padding, and because I live in a freaking hot country, how much better the cooling air flow was when compared to the AGV lid. It also allows you to easily remove much of the padding and lining so it can be slung in the washing machine when needed and, more importantly, that you can actually clip everything back again afterwards without regretting that you took it out in the first place and now no longer feel it fits as well as it first did.

But, then, our illustrious tour leader prefers Airoh helmets, so YMMV.
 
Found a good deal on a gmax helmet for my son, Anyone know anything about them? anygood? safe? Thx JC
 
I know it sounds "old school" but I went back to Bell helmets. I have been buying the previous year edition "Moto-x" for what I believe is an absolute steal. Right now, the Moto-9 is a bit over $500, but one can find Moto-8's for < $200 - and that is what I did. In two years, I will drill a hole through it, toss it in the trash and grab a Moto-8 for < $200 too.

I am a firm believer in mod-pack helmets replaced frequently. That $700 Arai that is 9 years old and has hit the ground 65x is not doing you any favors... At $200 I write it off as a $100 annual price to play and give zero thought to tossing it in the trash.
 
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