Out of the Box:This is a heavy helmet. I'm used to a Nolan N102 which weighs in at 1850 grams to which you add the N-Com bluetooth kit raising the weight to about 2kg. The Evoline starts at 1960 grams and fortunately has no bluetooth option. I also thought it was a bulky helmet but this may be a snap impression as when I look at it again it seems a little more normal in size, at least for a flipper. The lines look fairly clean suggesting it may not be too noisy.
The clear visor has a seal across the top of the face opening but not down the sides and the chinbar seal does not extend the full width of the opening suggesting there may be leaking at the sides and perhaps reintroduction of noise. The area between the red arrows has no seal.
Posted ImageThere are only two small vents, one in the chin bar and one in the crown with no exhaust venting. The top vent actually leads to only two small holes each about 1/4" diameter. The chin vent is about 1/4" x 1.5" and leads to a silver metal mesh, no way of knowing what is behind the mesh.
Posted ImageHelmet liner is ribbed and well padded. Its fully removable with plastic press-studs and fully washable.
Posted ImageThe shell is polycarbonate/Lexan, clear visor is 2.3mm thick. I presume due to the rear-parking of the chinbar, there is no provision for a chin airdam.
First Slip-on:Fit seems good for my roundish head, a little tighter in the cheeks than my Nolan. Balance seems good with chinbar in either position.
Visor seems OK optically. The visor has the latch handle at the top-centre which seems a bit odd, it only has 3 detent positions - closed, cracked about 2-3mm, and open with open being sprung loaded to snap up and stay there. The visor has to be open to rotate the chinbar.
There is a central latch-tab behind the chinbar to release the [claimed] stainless steel latches, once released the chinbar pulls forward slightly then swings up and over the helmet to park snug against the back of the helmet where a plastic ramp either side of the pivot assembly holds it - there is no true latch in this parked position and the bar simply pops over the ramps when it comes time to return to full-face mode. It is to be seen how long the ramps last before they wear and become sloppy. When returned to the full face position the chinbar needs to be snapped backwards to lock the latches, once locked the arrangement seems solid. There is quite a lot of room between chin and chinbar unlike the Nolan where I can thrust out my jaw and press against the back of the bar.
Posted ImagePosted ImagePosted ImageThe sunvisor operates smoothly and can be set at any positon bewteen up and down (although don't think there would be much point) - tint is normal density for these things, I think there is some legislation at play.
The Oz version (and I believe the US version) comes with a double-D-ring chinstrap and a retaining loop for the free end (prefer Nolan's press-stud as it is more positive and caters to not fully undoing the strap when removing the helmet - with the Shark I am also less confident using the chinstrap as a carry handle or hanger from the throttle because of this arrangement).
The pitifully small vents at least open and close smoothly and easily.
The visor removal system is very simple and effective. You do need a tool though (pen, pencil, ignition key, etc) to depress the retaining tab (cyan arrow) that locates in the hole indicated by the green arrow and holds the visor into the pivot plate. The visor can then be rotated out of the pivot plate thereby freeing the notch (blue arrow) from the lug in the pivot plate (orange arrow). As you can see there are no additional small parts to drop. The ramp that holds the chinbar in the rear parked position is indicated by the red arrow.
Posted ImageThe Test Ride:In open-face mode the helmet is exactly what you would hope to expect - an open-face jet fighter pilot helmet. It is worth noting that riding with the sun visor down and the clear visor up is not pleasant - the wavy bottom edge of the clear visor intrudes into the field of view and combined with the transition line between tint and open air is just one too many distractions. I feel this detracts from the advantage otherwise offered buy the convertible nature of the helmet. The cheek panels do come forward further than the average open-face - a bit like a Roman Centurian's battle helmet - this may offer a little more protection for the jaw in the event of a crash than the average open-face so I think are a good thing.
In full-face mode the helmet is surprisingly quiet, especially with the visor fully closed. Even with the visor in the cracked position its pretty quiet up to about 80 kph above which there is a growing amount of turbulance noise. This noise is also present with the visor fully closed so I suspect its from the air coming in under the chin. The results may of course be different without the Beemer's magic windscreen.
Unfortunately, in full-face mode the weight of the chinbar does drag the helmet down at the front and I found it applying pressure to the top of my brow that became annoying after about 40 minutes - not sure if there is a remedy for this.
The test return ride saw me riding in light rain - surprisingly the lack of side seals and full bottom seal on the visor did NOT see any rain coming into the helmet despite there being a visible puddle along the outside of the bottom of the visor. Heavier rain might have a different result. It was a warm day so not a good test of fogging however it was exceedingly humid and there was no evidence of fogging even with the visor fully closed, perhaps due to the amount of airflow from under the chin - the vents certainly don't seem to do anything noticable.
The crown of the head is kept fairly warm in this lid - there does not appear to be a lot of airflow up stairs, not surprising given the size of the top vent. The ribbed liner helps but more airflow would be a boon. The vent is small I guess to keep it out of the way of the flip-over chinbar but thats no excuse for further reducing the opening within the vent to the two 1/4" holes - I just don't understand why Shark did this.
I found the eye cutout is not as widely wrapped as some helmets slightly limiting peripheral vision - bad Shark!
NOTE Do
NOT wear Polaroid sunglasses with this helmet - there are stress aberations that become visible with Polaroid sunglasses in both the clear visor and even more so the sunvisor.
Conclusion:This helmet is a very clever and complex design, unfortunatelty this also translates to heavy and expensive.
It does provide two helmets in one but I cannot actually conceive of a time where I will be riding far in open-face mode as I like eating steaks and do not want to try doing so through a straw, as such while technically outstanding I don't see this function justifying the cost. On the other hand, a rider that prefers an open-face helmet but would like to be able to shut out the bug-swarms at odd times may find this function worth every penny.
The internal sunvisor is excellent, and so far the helmet does not appear to be overly prone to fogging.
The balance is not ideal and creates a pressure point in full-face mode that may become exceedingly uncomfortable on a long ride.
It needs better upper-head airflow.
Peripheral vision is limited a little by the narrow eye-level cutout.
Get used to Storm Trooper jokes.
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