Motorcycle Gear Guides & Reviews
As the Chap in the Cap tries to explain, staying warm on the bike is a relatively simple affair. It’s knowing how to stay cool that is far more of a challenge, because when it’s really, really hot vents and openings will only direct more hot air towards the body.
Now even though we had some lovely weather over Easter, it would be somewhat premature to suggest that summer is here. Although presumably it’s on its way.
Any new release from Rokker is a big deal, and so we’re excited to announce this riding shirt from Rokker. It’s a classic Rokker piece. This is a shirt that is going to look great as a casual shirt, but it’s also a proper functioning piece of protective wear.
Not the Chap in the Cap for this one; and so the job falls to Sara, aka the ‘ankle breaker‘. Now the Phillis is not a totally new jacket, but this is the first time it has been available in black. It also has to be said that the previous iteration didn’t work so well. The wax did not fully soak into the new technical material, which gave the fabric a rather greasy handle.
The TCX X-Tour Evo GTX is not your average touring/commuting boot. It’s got a particularly impressive spec., and in part that’s down to the fact that it’s a near carbon copy of one of the most highly-regarded boots on the market: the Daytona Road Star GTX. In fact, so close is it in design terms that it’s amazing the matter didn’t end up in court.
Now here at Motolegends we do not purport to be the specialists in off-road riding, although we are, through Klim in particular, getting more into the world of adventure riding. Historically, for us, goggles have often been decorative, a way to look cool on your café racer, but here we have something a wee bit different; the Viper Pro Black Ops is probably the most sophisticated goggle on the market.
In truth, Bering hasn’t traditionally been a Motolegends kind of brand, but we tend to be driven more by individual products than we are by brand reputations, so it’s not unusual for us to choose just a couple of pieces from a particular company.
Segura is a French motorcycle apparel brand. In fact, it was the two Segura brothers who originally set up the Furygan brand. A family dispute caused the two siblings to go their own ways, but that’s another story for another day!
The Belstaff Endurance is a classic, engineer’s style boot. It was a style that was originally popularised by those who worked on the plates of steam locomotives in America. When the boys returned from WW2 and took up biking to get their kicks, the engineers’ boot became a staple of the uniform; a uniform that would have been completed by a pair of jeans and a leather jacket.
We love Halvarssons. And that’s not just because we are their largest retailer outside of Sweden. The company is perhaps better known for its technical textiles, but based in Malung, which is the leather capital of Sweden, the company has access to some great hides. The Trenton, which is loosely based on the USAAF A2 jacket from the last war, is made from goatskin.
We love the French motorcycle clothing brand Helstons. They’re really rock and roll. They’ve been producing cool, café-racer style leather jackets forever. They were the French equivalent of Lewis Leathers back in the day, and they’re still producing proper bike gear for real motorcyclists.
The Belstaff Roberts jacket is a lighter and easier to wear version of the Mojave jacket. Like the Mojave, the Roberts is a short jacket, but in styling terms it is a little more casual and less bikey. From a functionality perspective, however, it is pretty similar to the Mojave. Now the Roberts is not totally new.
The McGee jacket from Belstaff is not totally new, although this latest iteration is a bit different to its predecessor. Last year, Belstaff submitted all its jackets for CE approval, but to meet the required standard new materials and techniques had to be developed.
The Segura Gunther is a traditional, four-pocket motorcycle jacket in the classic Belstaff mould. Although it has side adjusters rather than a central belt, and is made of a textile material rather than wax cotton. At just £325, it is incredibly well priced, given all the detailing on the jacket and what it delivers.
Every biker has to have a leather jacket. I’m sure there’s a law written down somewhere that decrees that every motorcyclist must, at some stage, be so equipped. By the same token, there are very few motorcycle clothing manufacturers out there who do not have a leather jacket in their range. Which means the choice is huge and overwhelming.
As Chris explains in this review, there’s no such thing as the perfect motorcycle jacket. And, without doubt, the Gamma jacket from Spidi is not going to meet the needs of a lot of motorcyclists. But for a small minority of riders the Gamma is going to be exactly what they’ve been looking for. It is, by any definition, an urban jacket.
The Rukka Forsair Pro is like a mesh jacket on steroids. The problem with most mesh jackets is that they’re not particularly protective. Most of them are simply going to fall apart in any kind of accident at more than 30mph. The Forsair Pro is made from a 750 denier Cordura for strength, but on this garment the Cordura is knitted rather than woven, allowing it to flow almost twice as much air. What’s more, every single panel of the jacket is going to flow air.
Here at Motolegends we are the jeans people. We sell more motorcycle jeans than anybody in the country. But as we move forward we won’t be offering any traditional aramid-lined, or Kevlar, jeans. They’re just too yesterday! The future is in single-layer jeans where the denim thread is woven around a super-strong fibre to create a single-layer fabric that is very abrasion resistant.
The glove that Chris is talking about today is not usually available to the public. It is made by Brian Sansom of BKS Leathers for a number of UK Police forces, but because we also sell to lots of Police forces, and because we have known Brian forever, we were granted special dispensation to offer these gloves to our customers. The version we’re talking about today is what is known as the summer version.
We love the Rokker boys. We love the Rokker brand. These guys combine cool style with high performance in the way that no other motorcycle clothing manufacturer does. Michael and Kai make the best jeans, the best chinos and the best boots. And every now and then they do a pretty decent jacket too. A case in point is their College Jacket. Never has a proper motorcycling jacket looked less like a proper motorcycling jacket.
