So after my recent trip to North Carolina where we encountered heavy drizzle, light rain, heavy rain, THICK fog, or some combination of all those, I am not real happy with my XD4... Simply put, it was horrible. I was unable to do anything to get it so I could actually see where I was going other than fully opening the visor and getting rain in my face, which wasn't really much of a solution. If I closed the visor, it fogged up almost immediately no matter what I did with vents or trying to keep my head in clean air flow (like standing or leaning to one side of the windscreen). If I tried to barely crack the visor to get some air in to clear the fogging, rain just poured down the inside of the shield which I couldn't clear and blocked my vision. Also, for whatever reason, rain on the outside of the shield just won't blow off the screen even if I stand and turn my head side to side. I never had issues like this when I had a Shoei RF1000 years ago. It was also virtually impossible to get my fingers or even a dry rag up under the raised visor to wipe it clean. Removing it would be the only way to clean it very well and that is a huge pain with this helmet.
Now granted, I don't generally do much rain riding day to day, so it is not a huge issue for my normal riding around home. But, when I go on trips to places like Colorado and North Carolina, rain/fog is almost guaranteed no matter what time if year I go. It was so bad on this last trip that we were really struggling to keep riding on our route and at one point tried to bail from our route to get away from the rain/fog. I would even go so far as to say it got dangerous when we were on the Blue Ridge Parkway and again a few days later on the Cherohala Skyway because I was having to ride so slow and there was risk of unattentive drivers coming up behind in the fog and hitting us.
So I have been thinking about this helmet as a potential replacement,
What's in a name? Call it the Shoei Hornet X2 Adventure Helmet, the Shoei Hornet ADV Helmet, or just the Shoei Hornet Adventure - a rose by any other …
www.revzilla.com