Motorbike Santa came a little early!

I'm not a big shopper. I am quite the bargain hunter however. I slowly built up my current shop full of tools, one at a time using as many coupons and sales as I could find to stretch my dollar. The same goes for my riding gear and even the bikes themselves. Now that I'm getting out to the track much more often, the next thing to do is replace my older, more basic gear with higher end gear. My bargains are fine for spirited street riding, but since I want to do this track thing as long as I can, better, more protective gear is on order. Thanks to the internet, holiday season shopping is easier than ever. Take a peak at some of the gear I was able to score for some really great prices.

In the course of a single week I got these three lovely boxes. All of them are for gear to replace my old stuff that was getting a little long in the tooth for various reasons. Two boxes came from Revzilla and one came from Sportbike Track Gear. Now that the shopping season fully upon us, my junk mail inbox is overflowing with some good offers amongst the other more nefarious emails. I have bought gear from both Revzilla and Cycle Gear online a few times before. Now that the same parent company owns both of these retailers, their sales offers are very similar and even identical in some cases. When looking for my bargains, I look for cases where a new model of a certain brand is coming out and replacing an older model. When this happens, the old model usually ends up in the clearance bin. These are where you can really score a deal on proven gear.

I'll start with my new gloves. They are Cortech Impulse RR gloves. My Sedici Ultimo gloves have served me very well. They are a great glove for the price with features found in many other high end gloves. At one of my kart track days, I dumped the bike in a slow speed low side. I ended up scraping a small hole in the glove where the plastic palm slider met the leather palm. I have kept wearing them, but the thought that another slide could could fully open the palm and eat my hand has kept me on the lookout for a new set of mittens. While shopping for a new helmet, I saw these in the clearance section for a bit a of discount and threw them in my online shopping kart. They are a full gauntlet spirited street/track day gloves. Not quite a full race glove, but just what I was looking for.

I got them in blue/black/white to match my Bilt leathers, which they do perfectly. The have a wrist strap and a two piece overlapping gauntlet. The top features a plastic knuckle slider and the palm has extra leather pads and a plastic slider as well. The slider is placed where you would slide on your palm if you fell forward and raised your arms to brace your fall. The gauntlets are longer than my old Sedicis and the leather is a bit more supple. As the Sedici gloves are more of a bargain glove, you can feel the quality difference on the inside of the glove. They aren't bad, but I can tell the difference between them and the Cortechs. The Cortechs are much more comfortable. I can't wait to get them broken in and look forward to taking them out on the track. Price from Revzilla was $129.99 with free shipping.

I initially went to Revzilla because they had some great deals on helmets. I have been on the lookout for a new helmet for a while. My current Shoei Qwest helmet is still going strong, but I am timing out on it for track and race riding. Helmets have expiration dates. A good rule of thumb is 7 years from date of manufacture or 5 years from date of purchase. My old helmet was made in November of 2011 and only has a Snell 2010 rating. Snell updates their rating every 5 years and some race orgs want the latest rating. After trying on many different helmets over the last year in the search to find my Goldilocks helmet, I ended up buying another Shoei Qwest. It is meant for upright riding, which is what I do most between stints on the FZ and the Ninja. The Revzilla Black Friday Sale had them for only $269.99 which is almost $100 off what I paid for my white one with free shipping. I also had $15 in Zilla cash which discounted my overall order. The Zilla cash promotion works since I keep going back to them. As always the order came in super fast and online updates were quick and easy.

Boots were another piece of gear on my list. My current boots, also Sedici Ultimo's, are a great street boot. I wouldn't hesitate to use them for kart tracks all day long. For the big tracks, I wanted something with more torsional protection. The twisting forces on an ankle in a wreck can shear ligaments and shatter bones. My current boots will provide good abrasion protection, but are on the softer side when it comes to the twisting forces acting on a foot when in a tumble. For this purchase, I jumped on a tip from the Ninjette forum about a closeout going on at Sportbike Track Gear. I was able to get these TCX R-S2 Evo boots for more than half off! These are a normally $429.00, full race boots for only $199.95. For that price I had to hit the 'buy now' button.

Aside from having great toe sliders, full leather construction and really great torsional rigidity they have a few more features that make them several steps up from the Cycle Gear Sedicis. There is an inner boot with pull tighten laces to get just the right fit for each foot. The pull tabs on the zipper pull and inner boot straps have velcro hook tabs that let you lock them in place with the velcro side flaps. They are higher up my ankle than my old boots which will help with overall leg protection. The coolest feature as shown in the pic above is the Precise Air Fit system. There is an air bladder that covers the front of my ankle and top of my foot and can be used to get a perfect fit for someone that is in between sizes like I am. I got size 11 boots when I am more of a 10 1/2. The air fit system takes up some space from the ankle area of the boot, locking my lower leg into the boot and giving me a very protected feeling. They are brand new and very stiff, but I imagine that they will break in well with the highly articulated top foot area. For now I'll be walking around the paddock like I'm wearing ski boots.

Well there you have it fans. When it comes to gear, tools or even bikes, if you want a bargain you have to scour the internet and have your credit car warmed and ready to go. Black Friday and other holiday sales might also be good times to make some mutch needed upgrades. Now that I went through a full year of track days, I'm planning for an equally, if not busier 2018 season. I'll be on the lookout for ways to slowly get the best gear for bargain prices that I can. When I do, I will share the deals with you readers. I've got a write up coming from my last track day of the year as well as some suspension tweaks that should help out with front end feel on the track. Stay tuned for more!

Blue