Buying some body armor-opinions

[katat58]

Yo uins, just ordered some body armor by Bohn out of Calif. and was wonderin if anybody out there has had any experience with this stuff? I've ordered what they call the Bohn adventure pants. Their made of spandex/lycra material with knee armor (CE rated) and a tuff foam padding material in the thighs, hips, and on the tail bone. This padding supposedly has some abbrasive resistance qualities. These pants are made to be worn under your jeans. The spandex/lycra holds the padding in place and is also cool. I live in Arkansas and the summers here are just brutal!! 100 deg. with 80/90% humidity. However, they fit tight enough you can also wear insulated undies when it's really cold. Also there's a company called Draggin Jeans out of North Carolina that make Kevlar reinforced jeans. The Kevlar covers your butt and knees. I did order a Kevlar pull over long sleve shirt from them. It has some extra Kevlar padding in the elbows and on the shoulders. It fits great and will be worn under my leather jacket for added protection and by itself in the hottest part of the summer. So if any of you have some of this stuff let me know how it works. Ride safe!!

[suzukisportrider2004]

hmm well give a write up with pics

[KatanaSoldier]

You are the test rat on this one. From the write up, it sounds like a good product.

[tdrcomm]

I have the Bohn Adventure pants. I wore them for nearly 6 days straight from here (LA) to The Gap and back in '05. Way more comfortable than I ever thought they'd be. The armor is removable and the spandex/lycra does a great job holding them in place. They fit well under jeans or any other pants. I have not gone down in them but the reviews from those who have are quite telling: The stuff works! Very good construction. In the canyons if I'm not wearing my leathers I feel freakin' naked with out them.

The Adventure shirt looks good but Dainese makes one that's called Summer Safety Jacket that looks even better. On my short list. I tried it on at Cycle Gear and it fits just like the Bohn stuff but with a much better back protector. I don't have Aerostich money for a full suit so I figure I buy a good, lined rainsuit for the cold, rainy weather combined with good body armor and I'm warm and dry until those winning lottery numbers pop up.

BTW: I've seen a bunch of guys riding with off-road pressure suits from SixSixOne, Fox, AlpineStars and O'Neill that look like the Dainese one, so I emailed SixSixOne and asked if the armor is removable and do they recommend it for street use. Matt Schumann from SixSixOne said "All of the armor is fixed in place." and "Although we have many customers that use our pressure suits and gloves for street riding we don’t advertise as such because we are traditionally a motocross company."

The guys at Southland say that they don't recommend them for street use because they weren't built for street, but I did some searching (not exhaustive) and found this:

http://www.calsci.com/motorcycleinfo/RidingClothes.html

There is a European body called CE which makes standards for vehicles, much like our DOT. They have a standard for motorcycle clothing and protective armor. All of the suits below which feature armor are CE certified. CE armor is good stuff for protecting you in a slide, or from small impacts.

People seem to focus on the injury caused by the slide. This is not where you tend to get hurt. On a taller bike like a touring or sport touring bike, you get hurt more from the fall. The bike is tipping over at 1g, but that number relates to the bike's center of mass. Your shoulders are about three times as high up as the center of mass, so you're actually levered into the ground at 2 to 3 gs, which means the fall from like 3-5 feet above the ground is effectively more like a fall from 6-15 feet above the ground. Leather and CE padding aren't going to have much effect on this.

You see these films where GP racers go down at 100 mph and walk away. It's worthwhile to remember that they are falling from only a foot or so high - often their knee is already on the pavement, and their elbows are only a few inches up. It's only a slide, and leather handles that just great.

Pretty intelligent argument but I need to find some more sources to form an opinion. By this standard, much of the motocross body armor would be better suited for impact, and if it (you) are also surrounded by leather you should have the best protection possible: pressure suit for the impact, leather for the slide.

Didn't mean to hijack but I'm looking out for anything that will protect and beat the heat, too.

[The CyberPoet]

Please note that CE specs has multiple grades and categories, and that unlike in Europe, there is no law requiring manufacturers to disclose which CE grade they use in the USA (or to use CE-grade, OR even that their stuff is truly CE grade -- just because they claim it is here, doesn't give you any serious recourse if they simply lied).

There is also a difference between CE-grade gear/suits and non-CE-spec suits/gear with CE-grade armor in them under EU regulations: if the entire garment offers protection, the entire garment must pass testing for CE accreditation (and which grade -- e.g. grade 1 is good up to 30mph). If the impact protectors alone are the only advertised protection, then only the impact protectors need testing & grading.
The testing is broken into four categories, all listed under
European Personal Protective Equipment Directive (EN 13595 PT. 1-4) -- footwear and helmets have their own categories. You can find more details for the layman here:

http://www.bmf.co.uk/briefing/bmfBriefingppeformotorcyclists.html

On a sidenote, Dainese has just released a new system in Europe that has a neck coverage add-on for their back protectors & some of their jackets with integrated back protectors. Should be available in '07 here in the USA. See

http://www.beta-zone.dainese.com/

for more details.

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

[tdrcomm]

Hey Marc,

What about the "Impact vs. Slide" protection issue? Do you think it makes sense or is it marketing fluff? None of the motocross folks seem to be going out of their way to say "strictly for off-road use", but they sure aren't aggressively trying to capture some of those "street" dollars, either.

[The CyberPoet]

At the extreme ends, it makes sense. Typical off-road gear is nylon football jersey mesh over hard-armor and offers no real skin protection (hey, look at their gloves). At over 25 mph on pavement, the off-road stuff would probably still shield you from the initial bounce, then the armor would shift, the fabric would tear like toilet paper, and skin would have to take over in place of the leather normal street gear uses. No to mention all the street grime, etc. getting into the wounds (which in many ways can be far worse to remove than just the misery of having serious surface abrasions).

Personally, I'll stick to leather. But I still think a set of shin/knee pads under dragging jeans beats nothing under levi's. If you're not going to wear riding pants, it's a better-than-nothing compromise.

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet