A product I hope to never have to review.

Riding a bike at speed at the track can be dangerous. Most people would just respond to that statement with a resounding "duh". Statistically speaking however, it is a very safe sport. No cross traffic or texting teens. Everyone is going the same direction and you are required to wear full safety gear. Many people actually stop riding on the street once they get heavy into track day riding. I'm not one of those people as I still like to get out and carve the canyons every once in a while. I do want to be as safe as possible. A chance came up to get some premium protective gear for a deep discount. It was a chance too good to be true, but I took it anyway. Take a gander below.

This is the Helite GP Air Track Vest. I got this vest through a round-about internet deal that when said out loud, sounds shady. A guy puts a post on one of the forums I frequent. I contact him through a personal message. He gives me an email address for a different guy that I can only send emails to after 9pm eastern time. Money was exchanged through some payment service other than Paypal that I've never heard of and I waited and waited and waited. Only the part about 9pm is untrue. The reality is that I sent some guy I couldn't pick out of a lineup a lot of money without any guarantee that the deal would pan out or I wouldn't have my identity stolen. I can't say how much money I sent him as that was part of the group buy deal. It was enough of a discount that I felt comfortable risking it and in the end I'm glad I did.

The vest is meant to be worn on the outside of your gear and it will replace my Icon Field Armor Stryker Vest back & chest protector that I usually ride with. Helite also makes jackets with the technology built in them, but since I want to wear this gear on the street and on the track the vest makes more sense. The technology of the vest is simple. So simple I wonder why it hasn't been done before. A tether (more on that later) is connected to your bike. In the event of an off, the tether releases a pin that punctures a CO2 cartridge inflating the vest. There are similar applications in life jackets. The CO2 inflates airbag channels that are located down the front and back of the vest and a collar across the back of your neck. The last one is the key one for me. The collar inflates enough to support the bottom of your helmet to hopefully reduce the chances of neck injury in an accident. The vest also has some good quality CE rated armor on the chest and spine. It is very stout armor and will protect me at least as well as my old Icon vest.

This is the tether I mentioned earlier. It is what activates the CO2 charge. It is a nylon web strap with a slightly odd shaped plastic snap buckle. It does have a few inches of stretch to it that, from the instructions, is to allow you to move around the bike when leaning into turns. The CO2 cartridge has the matching female buckle on a short cord that feeds through the front part of the vest. The CO2 cartridge is located on the rider's right side of the lower part of the chest armor. I only noticed the difference in thickness when I leaned forward onto my tank bag to get out of the wind blast while cruising the I-5 at 85 mph. The vest is leather and not perforated, but I couldn't feel any real problems with airflow as the sides of the vest are a synthetic stretch material and the arm openings are large.

To mount the tether to the bike you have to find some place where you can loop the tether around a solid mounting location like a frame rail. I chose an area under the Ninja's seat by the air box. Installation was a simple as pulling the seat latch and moving the seat back. You then loop the strap between the frame rail and the side cover and feed the buckle end through the loop before pulling it tight. I then positioned the strap up onto the tank before replacing the seat. I put the vest on and made sure that I had enough room to move around the bike with the tether attached. bYou don't want too much slack that would cause a delay in the airbag deploying. The pic above and the two pics below show what the whole mounting sequence. You want a solid area of attachment so don't try to mount it to something that might get ripped off in an accident like the side cover or seat. Also, don't mount it to the handle bars in any way as that might cause an inadvertent accident if the tether were to get caught up in the steering mechanism. You don't have to worry about accidentally deploying the airbag by forgetting the tether when you dismount. It takes somewhere around 60 lbs. of force to pull the CO2 activation cord free of its mount. You'll more likely pull your bike over off the kickstand before inflating the airbag. Of course if you pull the bike over, the weight of the bike falling will most likely deploy the vest. If it happens your friends will find it hilarious.

And there you have it. MotoGP style airbag protection for a fraction of the cost of what the pros wear. Easy enough to use for both street and track just by moving the tether from bike to bike or you can buy another tether from Helite. It has an easy to change CO2 cylinder system that only requires one simple Allen wrench. Helite also sells extra CO2 charges and there are YouTube videos showing how simple it is to change them over. If someone is willing to spring for another cartridge, I might be persuaded to video myself pulling the cord to see what happens.

Sometimes those internet forum deals pay off. On the ride I took a today I was trying to find something to complain about, but really I couldn't. Aside from it being outside my jacket and forgetting to detach the tether when I got off the bike back at home, it felt the same as my Icon vest that I've had for the last couple of years. I hope I never have the opportunity to make a post about the airbag deploying, but if it happens and I survive you know I will. I have some new go-fast parts for the Ninja coming in the mail and an upcoming trackway at Chuckwalla later this month. Come on back for more My Motorbike Obsessions content soon!

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