Car intercom

[27tim]

A friend is doing some driving and is going to need some instruction in a noisy car. Whats a cheap and easy as well as reliable and with good noise quality intercom system between two full face helmets?

Thanks!

[ButtonIt]

A friend of mine has a bluetooth device in his helmet for when he's riding his motorbike, speech quality is crystal clear. Maybe something like that?

[scotty_dog]

When coaching in Caterhams, Radicals or some of the noisier bigger GT cars, the only intercoms I have found that work effectively are Rally style intercoms, so sparco, omp, or if the budget allows Peltor. All can be battery powered so dont need in car wiring.

Everytime I have tried any of the bike style intercoms, the sound quality is appalling, you get loads of interference from the engine, and tend to be single earpiece, so you end up deaf in one ear.

I personally use an OMP rally one and have had no problems in quite a number of years use.

Scotty

[27tim]

Great - thanks for the feedback! :-)

[sanf]

Terratrip offer a good intercom - terraphone was the first one we had, was very good and you can get full face helmet kits.

http://www.terratrip.com/clubman.html

[thepawbroon]

The ideal would be to get 2 helmets with built in headsets (peltor, sparco, stilo, omp etc) and a peltor intercom unit all designed for rallying. These are often battery powered so you can move between cars. The advantage of the built in headsets is that they isolate background noise very well. However, if your budget doesn't stretch to new helmets, then retrofit headsets will work ok. As for brands, peltor are the leaders, all my rallying colleagues have been using them since the early 90s and they are the best!

[GreigM]

I've tried a few systems and "cheap" never ever works. I've now got an autocom system which is very good, but wasn't cheap.

[FlatPack]

sanf said:

Terratrip offer a good intercom - terraphone was the first one we had, was very good and you can get full face helmet kits.

http://www.terratrip.com/clubman.html

I've got a Terraphone pro in my aeroscreened Striker. It works well and is nice and loud, but above 80mph it picks up a lot of wind noise that starts drowning out speech - that could be down to mic positioning or the fact my aeroscreen could do with being a bit larger and obviously won't be an issue if you've got a closed cockpit. I did have to fit an external voltage regulator for it though, otherwise you got a lot of alternator whine through it.