Motorcycle Gear Guides & Reviews

The Zephyr shirt from Klim is a really neat and simple bit of kit, but it’s none the worse for that. It’s going to be really useful for a lot of bikers in a lot of circumstances. It’s basically a super-thin, windproof, inner jacket. It’s made from a four-way stretch fabric, to which has been laminated a waterproof/windproof membrane.

Now, there’s nothing particularly fancy or special about this jacket. On one level, it’s simply a ‘cheap as chips’ summer jacket that is not particularly worthy of great comment. Indeed, it’s not even a very new style.

Now we’ve titled this review ‘Top 10 short motorcycle boots’, and we’ve called it that because someone told us that Google loves ‘Top Ten’ reviews. But we simply couldn’t narrow down our selection to just 10 pairs, so the review actually covers no less than 15 different styles. Just don’t tell Google, please!  Now we’ve narrowed our choices to two styles of boot.

Now Chris worships Anthony at RevZilla. If you’re going to do video reviews on motorcycle products, it’s Anthony who sets the bar. Chris kicks off this review with a bit of a joke about the big fella and his review of the Klim Aggressor base layers. There’s only one problem here. Anthony didn’t do that review, but that doesn’t deter the Chap in the Cap. He’s never been one to let the facts get in the way of a good line.

The AFT initials stand for ‘Air Flow Technology’, and what that means is that this is a glove that is designed to flow large volumes of air in hotter conditions. The problem for us is that Rukka already does a really vented glove; and we love it. That glove is the Forsair. It’s a lovely, lightweight and stretchy glove that is so easy to wear, and that flows air through to the hand very nicely.

Frankly, we are in as much of a state of confusion as everybody else. Only a month ago we were excited at the very prospect of 2020. We were encouraged by our newly introduced video reviews; they were going down well and introducing us to lots of new customers. Business was well up on 2019. Exciting new gear was starting to come through. There were loads of talks with IAM groups booked into the diary. And we had a busy calendar of social events for the year that included a fashion show, overseas excursions, bike nights, fish and chip runs and so on.

The Spidi J & Dyneema jean is a slim-fitting, 13 ounce, single-layer jean made from a material called Dyneema, The jean has a 4.1 second slide time. Read our full review, and buy online from the UK’s premier motorcycle clothing store, with free shipping and free returns on all protective orders.

This event has now been cancelled.

It was in 2013 that Shoei first introduced the world to its J-Cruise helmet. It replaced a helmet called the J-Wing that had, in turn, been in the Shoei range for many years. But, for 2020, Shoei has improved and updated the J-Cruise with an upgraded model called, somewhat unimaginatively, the J-Cruise 2.

In a recent video review of a Halvarssons jacket I was somewhat disparaging about the hooded, inner thermal jacket. Predictably perhaps somebody commented that I was being elitist. Nonsense, I just felt that a hoodie in a Halvarssons jacket would alienate a lot of potential buyers. Personally, I’ve got nothing against a hoodie, provided it is not being worn by some South London, hammer-toting, pavement-mounting, scooter rider!

New from Halvarssons for 2020, and scheduled to arrive with us at some point in March, is a pant called the Zion. As Chris explains, it’s a bit of a hybrid. In its camo colourway, it looks like it should be an adventure pant, and with a removable waterproof membrane, this might reinforce such an impression. But, with no vents, this is no off-road pant.

This video review is somewhat of a biggie; both in terms of the subject it tackles but also in length. The subject matter is single-layer motorcycle jeans. Now, for some reason, we’ve always been big on riding jeans. Must have something to do with the kind of bikers we are. But, in recent years, we’ve become the poster boys for single-layer jeans.

You may not even have noticed that the Crosby disappeared from the Belstaff line-up for a while, but now it's back. It is made from a new fabric that has been produced for Belstaff by British Millerain and, of course, the jacket is now fully CE approved. The Crosby has long been a favourite of ours here at Motolegends. The shorter Mojave is sportier. It can be worn on the street, and nobody would ever know that it was actually a proper biking jacket.

We’re somewhat late to the party as far as video reviews are concerned, and we’re having to play catch up. Which is why we’re recording reviews every single day of the week. We’re reviewing a lot of existing products, but as new stuff arrives into the warehouse we’ll be reviewing all of that too.

The original Shark Evoline modular helmet was first launched in 2008. It was, in some ways, an evolution of the Boxer helmet that had originally been released by Claude Morin’s Roof concern about a decade earlier.

Let me kick off by stating that we at Motolegends are not saying that you shouldn’t trust a pair of Hood motorcycle jeans. What we are suggesting is that you should not trust the nonsense that the Hood Jeans people have posted on the internet about single-layer jeans.

We first met Lee at an American motorcycle trade show about four or five years ago. He's a bit of a motorcycling guru. He’s a well-known motorcycle trainer, a kind of Kieth Code of the road, but his pet project is his gloves.

The Shoei GT-Air 2 is not new. Indeed, it is now redundant and has been replaced in 2023 by the Shoei GT Air 3 helmet. It came out in 2019 and was, as the name suggests, a development of the GT-Air helmet that had been in Shoei’s range for many years. It would be fair to term it an evolution, although actually the new version shares very, very few parts with its predecessor. So whilst it still features the company’s AIM, multi-composite shell, it’s actually a totally new moulding. Other changes include better venting, a re-positioned chin strap, a ‘crack’ position for the visor and an integrated comms. system like you get on the Neotec 2.

Here at Motolegends we love the Halvarssons brand. They produce high-end gear at mid-market prices. We often talk about them delivering 90% Rukka quality at 50% Rukka money. They’re not the sexiest brand on the market. They’re not Dainese. But their gear works.

There just aren’t as many leather biking pants around as there used to be. Back in the day, every self-respecting biker had at least one pair in the wardrobe. But the leather pant was kind of hi-jacked by the sports bike crowd, and in recent years it’s been difficult to find really nice leather biking trousers; especially if you didn’t want knee sliders or a calf-gripping fit.