Hi I'm new here so I need help choosing gear. I'm sure there have other been other threads of what I'm about to ask but this way its a bit easier for me.

anyways I only plan on casually riding around the city mainly from home to school and some highway. I don't plan to take the bike to the mountains or track. So wth that said I felt that a jacket, helmet and gloves would suffice. I know helmets can get up to 700 bucks or soemthing but I'm a little bit tight on money here. I heard a 200-300 dollar helmet is good enough? If you guys could suggest some gear, prices, and place to shop for it that would be great! Thanks for all the help! I cant wait to start riding! Oh wait I almsot forgot, I was thinking maybe of getting a jacket for all seasons? Something that wont get hot in the summer.. and for fall and winter I was thinking maybe I could just wear a sweater underneath the jacket?

If you could post it like

helmet: blah blah
glove: blah blah
jacket: blah blah

that would be great.

Thanks!

Wow, okay, so you can't invest the time to search through forums for information that has already been given, and you're asking for help when you already seem to have your answer chosen through your pocketbook and narrow-mind.

My best advice is to buy the best you can afford. If that means waiting a few more weeks to save up money it might be worth it. You can't easily buy a $100 jacket and in six weeks when you get more money upgrade to a $200.

Helmets are a very personnal thing, much like tires but that's a hole other topic. There are round heads and oblong heads and fat heads and tall heads, you get the picture. So a Shoei RF-1000 may fit me just fine, but you may have a head shaped better for an Arai helmet. Go to a moto-stealership and try on helmets. The do a google search, I can't remember if it was Motorcyclist or Sportrider magazine, for the comprehensive helmet evaluation. The magazine did a very good side-by-side test of like 30 helmets to find out which was good and which was crap.

Gloves, basically you want some type of leather. Deer hide or kangaroo gives better dexterity but is more expensive. You want some type of closure to keep them on during a crash. Check out New Enough (http://www.newenough.com) they sell last years model lines at a pretty good price.

Personnally I ride with an Aerostitch Roadcrafter Jacket, a Shoei RF-1000 helmet, and Alpinestar SP-1 gloves. That's a pricey set-up, probably around $1000 today. But I know from experience that it can be crashed in, protect me and not get totally trashed along the way. I've had a high-side and two low-side crashes, the high-side was around 90mph at a PR track event, the low-sides were in the 40s also at track events. Both the jacket and the gloves survived, as well as the matching pants, the helmet got replaced out of principal.

Once you crash a helmet it is junk.

Also with a higher quality suit like an Aerostitch, it can be repaired and rebuilt if the need comes. A cheaper suit won't be servicable.

Next time, search before you start a new thread so we can keep relevant information together.

-Moderator

I did try searching however no one really asked questions as specifically as me so I thought it would be easier if I just wrote out my needs and tried to be as specific with it so I can get better replies. thanks

hey. well the helmet thing fierohink is right they all fit different. i had a $700 shoie and it rubed my fore head all the time now i have an icon and love it. (note with the icon if you ever hit 230km/h the helmet will start to rise. and yes it is fitted to my head). I live in icon gear. Not all that pricy but great stuff. totalled a 01 r6 and my jacket and everything worked great. look into that. not for the track but really good stuff. and look into some boots. love boots.

Maybe this might be a more relevant question for me.

I'm looking at the Teknic Violator and the Teknic Chicane jacket on their website and I can really distinguish what the big difference that causes the big price gap. I don't even really know if I NEED the Violator jacket since according to the site, the protection looks to be about the same. I do intend on taking my bike to the track along with doing city riding once I get up to speed but could any of you tell me the difference or even possibly why I might want the Violator over the Chicane?