Advice on budget clothing please.
Discussion
My son (17 next Jan) is planning to buy a bike (his first) from a colleague of mine - a 125cc machine. What advice do you PH-ers out there have regarding buying suitable (bearing in mind he's got no money!) weather-proof clothing and storage for helmet etc,.....any specific makes / dealers? He'll be using the bike daily to get to college.
Get a helmet with the gold sticker on. You can get them for around 50 pounds now.
Get boots which cover the ankle bone. Doctor Martens or similar (not the slip ons with the fabric sides) are fine.
Jeans and jacket is difficult, as good ones are not cheap. If he really can't afford protective leathers, even from the discount bin, then at least make sure he wears strong jeans. These are not nearly the same as leathers, but are worlds better than tracksuit trousers.
With the jacket, again, a proper jacket is best, as fashion leather jackets will often have very thin leather, which will tear in any accident.
You can find secondhand leathers in places like Loot. The thing to look out for is that the stistching is strong enough. Leathers get sweaty, and the stitching fails before the leather because of this. Don't buy some that have obviously seen decades of hard use (although of course, these would still be better than jeans).
You shoudl be able to find summer motorbike gloves from around a tenner. Again, try the discount bins at your local bike shop. Most places will have some of last year's stuff cheap.
Many bike waterproofs perform very very badly. They're fine in a shower, but leak at the seams in a downpour, leaving you with cold wet balls, back, arms...
Unless you are getting some that you know to be the best (several hundred pounds often), you are probably better off with the thin welded plastic stuff that you get in outdoor shops. These are not tough (but don't need to be), but are 100% waterproof. Make sure you get them in a big enough size to go over the bulky jacket and trousers, and still leave enough movement that they don't restrict use of the bike.
If you are dry, then thermal underwear (long johns, helly hansen top etc), a few llayers of shirt or jumper, and you can get pretty comfortable. If you get wet, then ride at 60mph in zero degrees, you'll get very very uncomfortable quickly, and can actually endanger yourself as you start to lose full use of hands and feet.
For helmet storage, I've never had any. Helmet lives in the house, and is carried with me when leave the bike. If he wants to leave the helmet on the bike, you can lock it upright on the seat, so the insides don't get wet, or wrap a bin bag around it.
If he's going to be riding a 125 through the winter, you need to make sure that the electrics are OK. My old 100 was on a 6v system. The alternator could provide about enough juice to keep things working, but over time, everything woudl graduakky run down, to the point where I had a very dim light. Get a cheap charger, and charge the battery up at the weekends. This shoudl make everything that bit more reliable, which becomes very important when you're kicking a dead engine over, getting swaty in your 10 layers of clothes on a freezing February morning.
Get boots which cover the ankle bone. Doctor Martens or similar (not the slip ons with the fabric sides) are fine.
Jeans and jacket is difficult, as good ones are not cheap. If he really can't afford protective leathers, even from the discount bin, then at least make sure he wears strong jeans. These are not nearly the same as leathers, but are worlds better than tracksuit trousers.
With the jacket, again, a proper jacket is best, as fashion leather jackets will often have very thin leather, which will tear in any accident.
You can find secondhand leathers in places like Loot. The thing to look out for is that the stistching is strong enough. Leathers get sweaty, and the stitching fails before the leather because of this. Don't buy some that have obviously seen decades of hard use (although of course, these would still be better than jeans).
You shoudl be able to find summer motorbike gloves from around a tenner. Again, try the discount bins at your local bike shop. Most places will have some of last year's stuff cheap.
Many bike waterproofs perform very very badly. They're fine in a shower, but leak at the seams in a downpour, leaving you with cold wet balls, back, arms...
Unless you are getting some that you know to be the best (several hundred pounds often), you are probably better off with the thin welded plastic stuff that you get in outdoor shops. These are not tough (but don't need to be), but are 100% waterproof. Make sure you get them in a big enough size to go over the bulky jacket and trousers, and still leave enough movement that they don't restrict use of the bike.
If you are dry, then thermal underwear (long johns, helly hansen top etc), a few llayers of shirt or jumper, and you can get pretty comfortable. If you get wet, then ride at 60mph in zero degrees, you'll get very very uncomfortable quickly, and can actually endanger yourself as you start to lose full use of hands and feet.
For helmet storage, I've never had any. Helmet lives in the house, and is carried with me when leave the bike. If he wants to leave the helmet on the bike, you can lock it upright on the seat, so the insides don't get wet, or wrap a bin bag around it.
If he's going to be riding a 125 through the winter, you need to make sure that the electrics are OK. My old 100 was on a 6v system. The alternator could provide about enough juice to keep things working, but over time, everything woudl graduakky run down, to the point where I had a very dim light. Get a cheap charger, and charge the battery up at the weekends. This shoudl make everything that bit more reliable, which becomes very important when you're kicking a dead engine over, getting swaty in your 10 layers of clothes on a freezing February morning.
Get him down to J&S bike stores, my local one (Newbury) has seriously cheap leathers & winter jackets that have decent armour in them. If he picks carefully its possible to get helmet, boots, gloves, jacket & trousrs for under the £150 mark. Its not going to be as good as full race leathers & Boots etc in a stack but a whole lot better than jeans and and old anorak!
Thanks for the replies mates. Jeans would have never been an option anyway - he is aware that bike clothing is very much about protection.
The colleague told me about J & S as he bought the bike from them (a Hyosung cruise 2 ...my son wants something that looks like a bike, not a scooter).
I see from their web site that you can get a jacket (with some armour) from around £60 or so (which would be within budget). Trousers don't seem so much in abundance though.
He should be able to go to around £250 so that would cover most of what he would need....and a company like J&S might be willing to do a deal if he bought all his gear in a bundle.
>> Edited by wolosp on Friday 22 November 12:52
The colleague told me about J & S as he bought the bike from them (a Hyosung cruise 2 ...my son wants something that looks like a bike, not a scooter).
I see from their web site that you can get a jacket (with some armour) from around £60 or so (which would be within budget). Trousers don't seem so much in abundance though.
He should be able to go to around £250 so that would cover most of what he would need....and a company like J&S might be willing to do a deal if he bought all his gear in a bundle.
>> Edited by wolosp on Friday 22 November 12:52
Yeah but come sale time real bike boots are very cheap, my mate picked up his alpinestars for £60!! my own waterproof 'ish'!! Akito jobbies are hardly top of the range but were only something like £40 not in a sale. Its best to get boots with ankle protection & a pad for the left- gear change foot side as the lever just wore through my old work boots.
I'd second that. They do their own range of IXS stuff and it's cheap. I've got an IXS water proof jacket which I've used for 3 years and it's pretty knackered now but well worth it for a budget buy. You can rewaterproof it each year or when required with waterproofing stuff from Millets. You buy a wash and bung it in the washing machine and then a wash in waterproofer that works extremely well (so well in fact it took a week to dry the insides of the pockets).
iguana said: Get him down to J&S bike stores, my local one (Newbury) has seriously cheap leathers & winter jackets that have decent armour in them. If he picks carefully its possible to get helmet, boots, gloves, jacket & trousrs for under the £150 mark. Its not going to be as good as full race leathers & Boots etc in a stack but a whole lot better than jeans and and old anorak!
Don't, whatever you do, let him get steel toecap army boots, doc martens or similar. The first time he has an off the toe cap may fold back and neatly remove his toes.
Regards,
Mark
dern said:I'm not sure what it stands for but CE is a standard. Armour is put through some tests to get it.
wolosp said: Forgive my ignorance - but what's "CE Armour"?
Mark
Thanks Mark,
And thanks too to all who've replied - I now have some useful money-saving tips for my son.
Maybe I'll even be allowed to ride his bike when he gets it
Paul.
>> Edited by wolosp on Saturday 23 November 19:43
One thing that's just occured to me to check when you go to J&S is that they tend to get older stock cheap (I believe) and you should check that the manufacture date on the helmet (label on the strap or inside somewhere) isn't too old. Magazines say that the stuff in the helmet deteriorates over time. I've never really seen how if the helmet is in it's box but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Editted to add: this happened to a mate who bought a helmet from J&S for a very good price it has to be said but it was already 18 months old and he didn't notice until he got home. They weren't willing to change it for a newer one. I've alwasy found them very helpful though and they exchanged a shark helmet for a shoei after I found that the shark's visor flipped up when I looked over my shoulder at eek speeds.
Good luck,
Mark
>> Edited by dern on Saturday 23 November 22:55
Editted to add: this happened to a mate who bought a helmet from J&S for a very good price it has to be said but it was already 18 months old and he didn't notice until he got home. They weren't willing to change it for a newer one. I've alwasy found them very helpful though and they exchanged a shark helmet for a shoei after I found that the shark's visor flipped up when I looked over my shoulder at eek speeds.
Good luck,
Mark
>> Edited by dern on Saturday 23 November 22:55
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