I'm sorry. I should have made that clearer about the shield. I changed the windshield on my bike to the Mirage 2 fairing on a f800gs and now everything is working well. Went for a ride again yesterday between wind storms and the new fairing with my XD3 modified visor worked all too well. Less noise and no vibes. I am liking that a lot better than before the new fairing.
So now that the XD4 has been released, has anyone picked one up? what do they think? I'm looking to pick up a dualie helmet and am finding now places near me that sell an Arai XD 1-4 for a decent price and so will have to order one online (will of course try one on at one of those locations to make sure of fit). I'm usually pretty cheap, but I'm also a sweaty bastard and the added airflow that XD4 claims seems nice.
The airflow in the helmet is probably the best I have had. But maybe it's made at the expense of soundproofing because this is one of the worst I have had in terms of sound. Fogging visor is also a problem. Have anyone else noticed that the visor seems to widen when you close it. One of the reasons why my visor keeps fogging is that this widening effect opens the pinlock from the bottom. Now I tightened the pinlock up and it doesn't open anymore but now when visor fully open the pinlock actually touches the visor surface.
Hey ÖÖ, I've only had one helmet before and so I don't really have any track record for comparison, but I thought the chin vents usually directed air up at the visor/shield to keep it from fogging up. I know during the cold my current helmet fogs up whenever I come to a stop and is typically fine once I'm rolling. I'm wondering if this is what's happening with the XDs'? Cause I'm fine with popping the visor/shield open a crack at a light as long as it's not fogging while I'm running.
That's the problem. At least I have to keep the visor little bit open almost all the time when riding in cold to prevent it fogging up completely. Worst experiences I had with it when temperature was below 5 C and it was raining. If you closed the visor it will fog, even during 80 km/h touring riding. If you opened it just a bit you got rain to the inside of the visor and fogging was even worse. Now in over 10 C temperatures it starts to work like you described. You can keep visor down until you stop or do some low speed off-road driving etc. I haven't yet got a chance to test it in warm rain conditions. I'm comparing this to my previous Shoei Raid helmet. With that you could keep the visor down in almost all conditions I drove. Only exceptions where the slow off-road and standing still a long time.
I just got one. Amazingly enough it feels lighter than my XD 3.. I havent gone over the thing with a fine tooth comb camparison, but the ventilation for sure flows better, did I mention it feels lighter, padding is more comfortable out of the box than the XD 3. I remember when I got my XD 3 it felt tight as hell for a long time. The 4 feels snug but comfy!! The new face shield has vents at that top that flip open and direct air down in over the inside of the shield. Nice feature but I wear glasses and got tired of always swapping between the regular glasses and prescription sunglasses, so unless I know I am going to do a bunch of night riding I use the dark smoke shield all the time. As of yet they do not have a dark smoke shield with the new vents. Overall, first few hundred miles I like the new one!! I changed because I had a tree mating incident and cracked the chin guard on my 3.