[eon]

I recently purchased an Arai helmet and the thing is a fog machine. Pisses me off as it is dangerously bad. I don’t understand why Scorpion can make fog free helmets and others cannot in helmets that cost 3 to 4 times as much.

Anyway I recently made my first purchase of an anti-fogging product and I went for Clarity DeFog as reviewed in webbikeworld. They seemed to like it and so far I have been very happy with it. Might be worth a try if you are desperate. Not sure how it compares to the other products out there.

[eon]

Yes, that is me on my Piaggio MP3, 500cc version.
Picture was taken east of the Cascades at Wildhorse Wind Farm. Cool place to visit if you get a chance (you can read my report on that day here

[Sean_D]

From some reading I had done there is a bit of a “problem” with the “fog free” visors. Problem may not be a good word, but lets say marketing hype. The fog free coating only lasts about 6 months and then you have to treat them like any other visor. But the trouble is that sometimes the fact that they were factory treated makes them harder to deal with than those that were never treated. The other option is to replace the visor and deal with it in another 6 months. Webbike world did a little experimenting with that in one of their articles. A lot of the manufacturers decided not to go that route since *hopefully* you will have your helmet 4-5 years. I guess they figure it is better to not treat it rather than have a fog free helmet for 6 months that may be harder to deal with for the next 3.5-4.5.

My first helmet was a KBC VR-2R. That had a fog free visor, which admittedly never fogged, but I only owned it a couple months. It also had no real ventilation to speak of. As soon as I would stop moving my glasses would fog up like I walked into a steam room. The Shoei RF-1100 has 6 vents on the top, the front vent, and a visor mode that actually pushes the bottom front of the visor away from the gasket to allow air flow without actually raising it up. It seems to vent really well.

Arai, Shoei, KBC and a couple others can use the Pinlock System. That actually works very well other with a couple of caveats. There is a little edge around the visor not covered so it can be slightly distracting until you get used to it, and the inserts are softer so can scratch more easily than the visor itself. But it does keep it fog free.

I have tried Cat Crap (also based on a webbikeworld review) and the Clarity DeFog. Both seem to work well on visors, neither seem great on my glasses. Clarity DeFog works the better of the two. But I think the issue may be the coatings on the glasses. The anti-glare, UV, scratch resistant.. something. It just seems like it only minimizes the effect.

The issue that I have with my glasses is warm air gets up behind them causing them to fog really bad at stops, and also since it is behind the glasses it takes a little while to clear. I have found the air mask seems to work well at controlling this. It goes up over the nose and has a metal pinch strip like a surgical mast. It forces my breath down and out the bottom of the mask so it can’t get up under the glasses.

Until I can find a product that really keeps the back of my glasses clear, I think the air mask is going to be permanent part of my helmet.

[Author]

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