Halvarssons Safety Jacket - First Impressions (long, lots and lots of pics)

[autolycos]

Originally Posted by cat

That's quite clever. Now I wonder if it wouldn't be even better - like more abrasion-resistant than leather - if it was made of an aramid blend instead of polyester.

Polyesters can be very similar to aramids, there just isn't a handy trade term for them.

[FuriousGeorge]

Great idea! Since the protection is in the inner jacket that shouldn't cause any safety concerns. Thanks a lot for all the great info, makinwaves. Now I just need to find some way to afford one of these.

Originally Posted by makinwaves

No, there arent' any vents per se, but you can unzip the outer jacket for one very large vent! If you look closely you'll notice that to do up the jacket you have to zip up the inner safety jacket, and then the outer shell. If you leave the outer shell unzipped there is about a 4 inch "vent" from top to bottom at the center of your chest. I discovered this accidently the other day when I forgot to zip up the outer shell and was shocked (! !) at the volume of air rushing into my chest! It really was unbelievable. Especially because once I zipped up the outer shell, there was nothing, not a hint of any air getting through!

So yes, if you unzip the outer waterproof (and windproof!!!) shell, you'll get an unbelievable large vent for cooling. If you want more air then you could switch to the "Airy" summer shell which is about a third mesh. Takes about 20-30 seconds to switch between the outer shells....

I haven't tried, but yes the outer shells should pack down quite small. As you note, no armour or thick material (e.g., cordura, kevlar, etc.) to get in the way.

[cat]

Originally Posted by makinwaves

There's a zipper provided on the inner jacket which attaches to the pants. If you look at some of the pictures of the safety jacket where it is opened up, you'll see the zipper just below the Outlast layer.

It doesn't matter much, though, because even with other pants - without being attached - there are the crotch straps on the jacket - like you with your motoport pants. That's a good feature, and it's probably much easier than fiddling with zippers.

[Robare]

Well after lurking here for a few months in search of gear, I had to become a member because of this thread. Unfortunately I don't think this gear will work for me because I do usually take tall sizes, especially in the pants. I can sometimes get away with jackets in normal size, but it never fits perfect. In any case I don't want to polute this thread with all my possible choices but to keep it focused on this stuff.

Questions I have:

It's poly, what temp does it melt at?

Do you have pictures of the armour in it? I know it doesn't have a back pad, but I'd like to see the arm/knee armour. How does it compare with others?

How does the length run in the pants?

[cat]

The sizing, the pants length... biker-land.de will send you a Jofama measurements list and get Jofama to recommend based on that.

The armour is the same as T-Pro Forcefield armour, which is probably the best there is. The Forcefield website has pictures.

I don't what temperature the polyester fabric melts at but that's not a specification of the CE standard. Impact abrasion is and the Halvarssons Safety Jacket and Pants exceeds the specification.

[makinwaves]

Originally Posted by Robare

Well after lurking here for a few months in search of gear, I had to become a member because of this thread. Unfortunately I don't think this gear will work for me because I do usually take tall sizes, especially in the pants. I can sometimes get away with jackets in normal size, but it never fits perfect. In any case I don't want to polute this thread with all my possible choices but to keep it focused on this stuff.

Questions I have:

It's poly, what temp does it melt at?

Do you have pictures of the armour in it? I know it doesn't have a back pad, but I'd like to see the arm/knee armour. How does it compare with others?

How does the length run in the pants?

I'll take some pictures of the jacket armour and post later this evening. I don't have the pants so can't help you with that..

Now for melting....

I've searched quite a bit trying to find more information about motorcycle jackets melting onto skin as a result of friction from a crash, and really can't find any reliable sources that says this happens. In particular, there are a number of studies out there that document motorcycle crashes and injuries; i.e., causes, gear choice, helmet colour, accident rates, body parts injured, degree of injury, etc.; however, none of them even mention a single occurrence where a jacket melted onto the skin.

Until someone can show me there is a probable chance of this happening, I have omitted it from my criteria for defining a safe jacket.

I did do some research into melting points and wow is there ever a lot of different clothing materials out there!! I'm far from anything related to a clothing expert, so I stuck to reliable or verifiable sources for information (e.g., DuPont, MSDS sheets, patent information, etc.). Here is what I found with the Halvarssons jacket slotted in to the mix:

[Name of Material - Melting Point in degrees Celsius]

• 500 denier Cordura - 210
• 700 denier Cordura - 210
• Lycra - 250
• Halvarssons jacket - 240-260
• 1000 denier DuPont Cordura - 265
• Dynatec - 290
• Kevlar - 420-480

Lycra is a trade name for elastane, similar to spandex, and is applied with the "host" material to increase it's stretchiness. Dynatec is dynafil, which is described as a much stronger version of 700 denier Cordura.

Ignoring Lycra and Kevlar, I would say that the Halvarssons Safety Jacket is in the middle of the pack with respect to melting temperatures. Kevlar is obviously the highest and technically it doesn't melt at all. At the temperatures noted the material kind of disintegrates rather than melt.

I found a couple websites that inferred polyurethane coatings on the jackets (which aid in water proofing) can increase the risk of a jacket melting. I could not find any jackets that were completely free of polyurethane, including Kevlar clothing. For example, Cordura is described as "Type 6.6 polyurethane nylon". Motoport's Kevlar clothing and Keprotec clothing are actually 3 to 4 fabrics blended together as Kevlar on it's own cannot be used for clothing manufacturing. Usually, the blends consist of some form of Cordura and Lycra. Lycra is defined by its patent as having a minimum of 85% polyurethane. I'm not sure how much Lycra and Cordura ("polyurethane nylon") make it into a Kevlar blend, but I believe it is a fair amount. It would be interesting to know how that effects the "no-melting" claims of some of the Kevlar clothing manufacturers.

Note, this is not a knock on Motorport or Rukka which produce Kevlar clothing and which I personally use (and love!) for pant protection, just a simple objective comment / question. At the very least the Kevlar blended clothing would have the least risk of injury due to melting as much of the material is made of Kevlar fibres that don't melt.

Hope this is useful!

[Robare]

Yes, that is helpful. You knew exactly where I was going with this. I've been doing my homework and almost pulled the trigger on motorport but I just can't get myself to do it. The melting thing was 'bothering' me. I've also looked at BMW's street guard(Armocor) and some of their other stuff with the Dynatec. Recently I've started to look at leather again. I need to decide pretty soon, or my riding season will be over (just kidding).

[makinwaves]

Robare:

Maybe you could get the motoport pants so you can get the length custom sized, and then the jacket of your choice (of course, I'd recommend the Halvarssons... ) It's the exact same setup that I have and so far, it's awesome!

I took some photos of the Halvarssons CE armour from the jacket, as well as the armour in my now retired Joe Rocket jacket and the armour from my Motoport pants. Pics below.

To be fair, I don't think any physical inspection of armour is going to tell you a lot and what you really need is to test it on a machine to see how much energy is absorbed by the armour. But for what it's worth....

• Joe Rocket - appeared to be 2 layers of foam and felt quite cheap. Was the thinnest of the three at the edges, but thicker towards the middle.
• Motoport - was 3 layers of foam with the outer layers quite pliant and the inner layer quite firm. Seemed to be of better quality. Overall, probably the thinnest.
• Halvarssons - was more like a rubbery compound, felt like high quality, had the CE approval marking and was the thickest of the three.

The Halvarssons also was the only one that was held in place quite tightly with velcro. It didn't seem like typical velcro either as it was really difficult to pull apart. This coupled with the tighter fitting arms should hold it in place better than the other two which are just inserted into pockets of the jacket/pants.
Then I conducted a highly scientific study to test their real world properties...

One by one I grabbed each of the armours and with the same hand held it against my palm. I then punched the armour with a blunt, but pointed heavy object. The amount of pain sustained by my palm was how I ended up with my rankings....(I did mention how scientific this was didn't I?? ). So here's how they faired, in order from best to worst:

1. Halvarssons armour - almost no pain whatsoever, however I did test these last so I wondered if the little pain I did feel was because of the previous blows.
2. Joe Rocket armour - lots of pain although not unbearable.
3. Motoport armour - really painful, worst of the three. Surprised really because by the feel of the foam I thought it would perform better.

Like I said, not the most scientific study, but it was interesting to play around with the different materials. From left to right in the pictures is the white Motoport armour, the grey and blue Joe Rocket and the black Halvarssons armour. There's a few more pictures of the Halvarssons on its own; sorry the flash was not functioning that well...

[Robare]

Thanks again for your information. For some reason your pictures do not show, says bandwith exceeded. However I have managed to track down some sites with pictures of the armour. I like your test, I have received samples of motoport padding and stretch kevlar. I did the punch wall test with the padding from motoport and thought it was ok, but didn't have anything to really compare it to. I did my own 'abrasion test' also comparing the kevlar stretch material from motoport, icon barrier pants with the aramid material and a 30+ year old leather jacket. I took a dremel tool to each timing how long it took to wear through. The icon pants did very poorly, about 1/6th of the time the kevlar took. To my surprise the 30+ year old weather battered piece of leather still did better than the kevlar. I'd say the kevlar was 3/4 what the leather was. I know this wasn't too scientic either, but felt it shows something. Under normal circumstances I would expect the kevlar to do better because it would flex and move more in a slide.

Maybe the motoport pants and the Halvarssons jacket would be do able for me. Some Jackets fit me OK, but usually a little to loose in the arms for the armor.

[makinwaves]

Originally Posted by Robare

Thanks again for your information. For some reason your pictures do not show, says bandwith exceeded. However I have managed to track down some sites with pictures of the armour. I like your test, I have received samples of motoport padding and stretch kevlar. I did the punch wall test with the padding from motoport and thought it was ok, but didn't have anything to really compare it to. I did my own 'abrasion test' also comparing the kevlar stretch material from motoport, icon barrier pants with the aramid material and a 30+ year old leather jacket. I took a dremel tool to each timing how long it took to wear through. The icon pants did very poorly, about 1/6th of the time the kevlar took. To my surprise the 30+ year old weather battered piece of leather still did better than the kevlar. I'd say the kevlar was 3/4 what the leather was. I know this wasn't too scientic either, but felt it shows something. Under normal circumstances I would expect the kevlar to do better because it would flex and move more in a slide.

Strange the photos don't show. Not sure why. You can go here to the Photobucket site and see all of the photos I uploaded for this thread(http://s163.photobucket.com/albums/t...erider_photos/).

Interesting test. It'd be nice to see results on how the Kevlar blends fair under CE testing.

Originally Posted by Robare

Maybe the motoport pants and the Halvarssons jacket would be do able for me. Some Jackets fit me OK, but usually a little to loose in the arms for the armor.

The Halvarssons may solve that problem as the tightest part of the jacket is the arms. I understand it was designed that way to keep the jacket arms from moving up and exposing your bare arm/skin during a crash. It's the only part of the jacket that is a bit of a struggle for me taking on and off as the arms are fairly narrow.

Good luck! Hope you get something before the riding season kicks in fully!

[bone]

Originally Posted by makinwaves

It'd be nice to see results on how the Kevlar blends fair under CE testing.

This has been covered before, but it remains true - a lot of people at least on this forum would love to see the Motoport stuff go through CE testing. For me, their clothing looks really bad and the one thing they've got going for them (unless you're into expensive, dumpy-looking clothing in mostly garish colours) is the safety/comfort factor. It would be great to know just how safe Motoport stuff is in comparison to other brands.

[cat]

Keeping this thread alive while I try - struggle- to find out what size Halvarssons pants I should get for my long legs and skinny waist.

I just found this pdf about the Outlast temperature-regulating fabric that Jofama/Halvarssons use. Very interesting. Nice pictures of various gear that uses it. Spanish police boots, French police gloves made by Furygans Leather, UK motorcycle police hi-vis jackets made by Jofama (way better than any we've seen here), Rome police jackets, and nice desert type camo made in Serbia lined with Outlast.

Outlast is a company based in Boulder, CO.

http://www.outlast.com/fileadmin/use...-270405-gb.pdf

[ikonoklass]

Originally Posted by cat

Outlast is a company based in Boulder, CO.

Outstanding! Hey, does anyone know how you go about getting a Halvarsson's repaired in the event of a getoff?

[cat]

It would be the same as anything else - send it to them and they fix it, or replace it. Which is not so good for us that aren't in Europe. I don't know if they say anything about it on the website, but the impression I have is that they'd sort it out - it's their "high-end" top of the range gear, it's not mass-produced.

[DriveShaft]

Originally Posted by cat

I just found this pdf about the Outlast temperature-regulating fabric that Jofama/Halvarssons use. Very interesting. Nice pictures of various gear that uses it. Spanish police boots, French police gloves made by Furygans Leather, UK motorcycle police hi-vis jackets made by Jofama (way better than any we've seen here), Rome police jackets, and nice desert type camo made in Serbia lined with Outlast.

Outlast is a company based in Boulder, CO.

http://www.outlast.com/fileadmin/use...-270405-gb.pdf

Hey Cat. Check out Schoeller's Phase-Change-Materials (PCMs). It's the same parafin encapsulation method used in the Outlast materials. I'm not sure who licensed what from whom, but Schoeller's PCM stuff has been out since 2004 at least. I've got a bmw phase change jacket on right now, actually, which uses the schoeller pcm. It's nice. It actually works. But its limited in the extent of what it does. It works under the premise that temperatures are cycling *around* the comfort zone. And it's pretty easy to "overstay" your time above the comfort zone and start overheating, or alternatively, stay in a cold environment too long as well.

It's funny. When you look at the material label on the jacket, it says "Paraffin -- 22%." That's right. The jacket is 1/5th wax.