How's the latest helmet going?
A very good question, let me tell you!
Well wear and tear and perhaps bad hand placement have taken their toll. I have two problems with the helmet:
Let me elaborate.
As you can see from the following picture, you can see one of the sealing surfaces between the helmet and the visor sticking up. Now this is not a defect or failure in the helmet. I suspect that it's the result of my hands grasping the helmet as I remove it from my head. As I'm sure you all realise, the helmet is a very snug fit. So In an effort to not have the helmet fly off as I take it off, I grasp the helmet at precisely this point. I suspect that after a period of time I have just broken the seal.
I'm not sure of what else can be done it terms of hand placement, but maybe there's another technique to remove the helmet without causing this sort of damage.
So far there doesn't seem to be a problem, but then again I haven't ridden in the rain/fog to test the seal.
The second problem is more mysterious. Notice the loop strap on located in the right hand circle. I f you follow it to the back of the helmet it appears in the left hand circle. Also notice how detached the back strap is.
In a normal situation, the back strap mounting point is underneath a cube of foam, as is shown below. You can't see the actual attachment to the helmet, as it's under the foam cube.
On the other side however, there has been a failure at the anchoring point. The red line shows where the two ends are supposed to be connected. Over a period of time I noticed that the foam cube was protruding somewhat but didn't take too much attention. After awhile though, I did take a close look and understood why it was the way it was.
I haven't tried fixing the problem just yet, but I will try something.
I have no idea how this failure occurred. There just doesn't seem to be any tension on that strap to cause such a catastrophic failure.
The poor cube of foam has finally become detached from the strap as well.
Time for some engineering!