Is it worth $400? I say no. At first glance the product looks great. It comes with fancy box, when you open it you see your new goodie and you just spent $400 bucks and damn it, your going to like what you bought. The packaging is nice from the outside, but then inside is a piece of hand cut cardboard holding some of the spare parts together with zip ties. Does any of that matter? Of course not, but you did just spend $400 bucks. It appears to be injected molded plastic and at first glance the hardware looks nice. They spent a lot of time making sure the bolts are recessed and trick looking.
Some assembly is required. Not a big deal, you just have to bolt on the thorasic member that runs down your back. (this is the piece attached to the cardboard). Oh, but wait a minute, no allen wrench is included. A big deal? Not really, but I did just spend $400 bucks. Even cheap furniture from Target comes with an allen wrench. Usually a cool double sided z looking wrench.
My son tried his on and all looked great, no problems he said he didnt feel it. I didnt try my on, just headed out to the track. (MISTAKE) I put it on and HATED IT, HATED IT, HATED IT. Anyone who is larger in size or has a short neck, broad shoulders, big muscles, it will NOT fit you out of the box. I have since adjusted it to the large size and I am going to try and ride with it tomorrow. While standing up riding I couldnt get my head flat, it was forcing me to look down, but the chin piece was hitting my helmet and making my helmet lift off of my head. When I went back to car to try and make some adustments, I noticed that one of the C CLIPS was missing already.
C clips? C clips? Are you serious? I just paid $400 bucks and this thing is held together with C clips? Yes, all over the place are these tiny clips. Mine fell off within 2 laps of warmup. Could this be because it didnt fit properly? Maybe, but come one. You could have come with something better here than a pin and a C Clip.
I stopped by the hobby shop and bought a bag of C Clips and proceeded to try and figure out how to resize the brace to fit me better. I say try and figure out because there are ZERO instructions on how to resize it. There is an arrow pointing to a crappy picture that shows you a mystery spot where you supposed to make the size change. I eventually figured it out and I have it resized. I will try and ride with it tomorrow. I can tell you it feels way better already, just trying it on with a helmet.
$400 bucks is too much for this thing. I would imagine the price will drop in the next year or so as they get the tooling paid for and the novelty wears off. It looks like it could be injected molded overseas for $30-50 bucks. I would say $200 bucks would be a fair price for it.
I think safety wise it will save a life at some point. A lot of people wont spend $450 bucks for a helmet, I dont see them paying $400 for this. I am not encouraging anyone to buy one or not to buy one.
If I had it to do over again, would I buy it? I dont think so, but my tune may change after I ride with it again.
Edit:
I made the adjustments to increase the size today and tried again. No luck. I still cannot ride with it. I think people that are not used to neck donuts, or are larger than 200 lbs are going to have a tough time with it. I am going to try one more day with it. I have adjusted the brace every way from Sunday and it still to close to my chin and when standing up in the attack posistion, it hits the back of my helmet.
Edit: Day 3 and 4 were much better with the device. It still hits my chin constantly, but I am learning to live with it. I am going to keep riding with it and learn to deal with it.
Linear Mode
