On the Road Again!

I had had this helmet seven years.   I know this as I just clicked on the C2 link over on the right of the blogger screen and it grouped all the C2 posts together.   Quite a variety of posts.  I never did get the the left side lock fixed. Oxprod wanted £75 to look at it and fix it and if the parts needed came to more than that then I would have to pay the extra.  So I make do with flicking the hooked piece with my fingertip before putting it back on. I recently bought a new visor for it as the other had a rather irritating scratch on the front, courtesy of walking into the garage with the front flipped and scraping it on the bottom of the metal door.   It wasn't too bad but did refract light from the sun and headlights a little. The new one arrived yesterday and so I need to get if fitted ASAP. Although it has the locking problem, it is still very quiet. It has a wide face opening that gives plenty of view around.  Let's see how it goes on ...

The Schuberth C2 has been a bane of my life.  The most expensive helmet I have owned for years and years. I thought I had a Shoei head, although years ago I had an Arai and it was a reasonable fit. The Schuberth is in a different league for fit though. It's hard to describe how well it fits the contours of my head and with the skirts under the ears and the chinpiece envelope my head. I guess this is the same for all of us converts. The bane though? I'd had it a few weeks and the top vent broke off and so it had to go back. Then more recently the left lock has failed on the chinpiece. I found a solution to this and will persevere and hope it doesn't go tits up full time. The ride home tonight was the nearest to nirvana I've had for ages... where a motorcycle helmet is concerned. Quiet! On the way up to London I couldn't really tell how much better but on the way home it was bliss. Another bane? I can't get the Scala bluetooth stuff fitted to it. If I am g...

After digging the C2 out of the back of the wardrobe to take it to Infinity, I had a play to see why the lock on the left wasn't closing properly. I noticed that the lock that goes over the locking posts at each side is in effect a hook. On the right side the hook is in one place, and on the left it is further away, sort of leaning back, so that when the chin piece is pulled down it clashes with the head of the locking post. I moved it back with a fingernail and it was fixed. Sadly, the fix is only temporary as when you open the chin piece it flicks back into the wrong position, so something is letting it move out of line. I gave it a run out to work today. At first I didn't notice the increased quiet in the helmet but overall it is a quieter helmet than my other choices, both Nitro's. I always wonder if other C2's have the same floppy visor? With the Nitro I am used to a stiff action that keeps the visor down, but the C2 is much easier to move up and down; far less ef...

After a damp squib of a week it was nice to get up this morning to see the sun blazing in through the curtains. A relaxed ride in even. It was the last day of half-term and so most people had decided to take the day off and so the run right upto the Blackwall Tunnel before the clag started. Since the bus lanes were opened it has opened a few more miles of tarmac that we don't have to share with four wheelers. Catch up with a bus and try to get out and round it and then things can get more complex. If you encounter some midget at the wheel of a 38-tonner. A guy on a CBF in front had a slanging match with a Scottish dwarf ranting at him from the safety of his cab. Quite exciting viewing though. Amazing though how many tough guys need 38 tons to feel like a man. The ride home even better. Away from work at 4.15pm and down to Holborn to Infinity to see about getting my C2 fixed at long last. Although I have never managed to get it working with my Cardo setup, I want to be ...

C2? The most expensive pile of shit I have ever bought. Strong? No. It seems I have bought the " Freitag Nachmittag Müll " - Friday afternoon shit. What's wrong this time? Something has gone wrong with one of the locks on the chin piece and it needs dismantling and fixing. This time getting it repaired will be hard work as it is out of warranty. The Oxprod bloke at their road show said send it back, but Oxprod won't accept it from a customer only a dealer, and Infinity don't give a f*ck. Dump the thing in the sea filled with concrete to start a new reef?

Since the helmet came back from Oxprod after they repaired the top vent, the forehead lining has been slipping when I am wearing it. There are two plastic bolt heads that are presumably where the liner is fitted to the outer shell. To hold the forehead liner, a band of padded material in reality, in place there are two round Velcro pads, coincidentally the same diameter as the bolts head. These are glued one side to the bolt head and the other is the "male" type of Velcro, and it's these bits that move. The first time it looked as though I wore a wig and the glue had run. Luckily I am a baldy-man but the line of glue looked bad! I have some Velcro I can use from the lot I used to hold the ear speaker for the GPS in place. And that's another job. I still need to ease the ear space so that the speaker fits a little less closely to my ear. I might lose some of the volume but the edges still rub on the ridge of my ear!

The ride home from London was so much quieter with the C2 rather than the Caberg. I've noticed that there is still a lot of glare despite wearing my Reactions glasses and so the C2's sunshade is ideal. It could do with being a little longer so it extends further down, but it does the job. The main wonder is how long it will take to "give". It is quite tight and feels that it is part of my head rather than a bucket covering it! Later this week, I need to work on the ear recess enlargement to get the GPS speaker in place.... Watch this space.

Had a call from Infinity, my Schuberth is back at the shop so I'll have to go down that way home and pick it up. Should be fun negotiating the rush hour traffic around Holborn and the end of Oxford Street! When I get it home I need to practice a little surgery on it to make sure I can get the earpiece for the GPS in it comfortably. On the BMW Club forum there have been a few suggestions on how to make the ear recess a little bigger, but I really don't want to start pulling the lining out and messing about like that. Maybe resort to the "gentle" persuasion as I did with the Cabergs and use the end of a hammer handle to gently tease the foam back a little to relieve pressure on the ears, and that I have to do on Claire's new J1S.

After getting no reply from Schuberth in Germany, I posted a note on the BMW Club Forum and at the same time I emailed Infinity (where I bought it) and was more successful. Replies on the Forum pointed to Infinity. Charlotte at Infinity replied to say that I should get the helmet back to them and they would sort it out and get it fixed. So this morning I rode up and dropped it into their shop in Holborn.

1) With five minutes to go before the "off" for the Wipers Trip, the zip on my Hein Gericke jacket wouldn't stay done up. Tried a few times and it popped open again with the slider at the top! Aaaaargh . Luckily, I have an old Frank Thomas jacket in t he garage , rather musty, but wearable. Amazed that it was so big and baggy, even though I've never been that much of a porker! Still it did the job. Today's job has been to try and find someone that can replace the zip on the HG. It's still in good nick and a shame to ditch it and buy another one. I posted a cry for help on the BMW Club forum and have a suggestion of Dobbs Leathers in Northampton. As it is after shop closing hours I've emailed them..... 2) The Schuberth was painful all day. The helmet itself is a tight fit and I expect the padding to give with wear. it feels more solid than the Caberg and so it should for 2.5 times the price! The other problem was that the earpiece for the the GPS w...

When I came to fit the headset into my new C2 I was a little worried that I was going to have to unpick the lining and perhaps even cut parts of the helmet away to get it all to fit. In the end it was all very stress free. The headset I have is a single speaker in and a rather long cable that leads to a plug that usually hangs about 8 inches from the helmet. In the Caberg J1S the ear recesses were deep enough and the padding was removable with pop studs fasteners to slip the speaker in behind. The speaker comes complete with a backing disk that fixes to the front part with Velcro. Luckily, the speaker is stitched to that bit. The outer part that is in contact with your ear is brushed nylon. In the C2 the ear recesses are quite shallow in comparison but if you delve about the can find a further recess, hidden by the lining that is about 1.25ins in diameter. Exactly the right size for the speaker. Fitting was simply a matter of separating the two halves of th...

Okay, I admit I went to the bike show in the car. But in mitigation it was because both Claire and I wanted to shop around for new helmets. We have become quite good at parking up and getting the tube and used this to good effect over the last few weeks, firstly for the "Vive la France" Show at Earls Court when we parked all day for a fiver at the car-park at West India Quay in the newly "upmarketed" docklands. But the DLR is quite slow when compared to real Tubes. Then last week we had a run up to London again for the Arsenal vs Bolton FA Cup 4th Round game and tried a different tack and parked for £3.00 at North Greenwich, by the Dome. Not only is it cheaper but the Tube is much quicker than the DLR! So to get to Excel we did the same. It looks as though we really need to get an Oyster card as North Greenwich to "Custom House for Excel" is one stop on the Jubilee Line and two on the DLR and all for £4.60! As fate would have it, Claire bought a new Caberg...