Arai XD-4 Initial Impressions and Real World Evaluation

[RogerWilco]

You did a very good job on those stickers!!

[Duelsporter]

So after riding with the XD-4 for a week now, I'm still liking pretty much everything about it. The one negative comment is that the face shield fogs worse than any helmet I've ever had. It was 62 degrees F here today, and it still fogged with every breath. Didn't matter what combination of vents open / closed I tried. The only thing that worked was to crack the faceshield open a bit -- but that won't be useful the colder it gets. Anyone found a remedy for this?

[fbj913]

Originally Posted by Duelsporter

So after riding with the XD-4 for a week now, I'm still liking pretty much everything about it. The one negative comment is that the face shield fogs worse than any helmet I've ever had. It was 62 degrees F here today, and it still fogged with every breath. Didn't matter what combination of vents open / closed I tried. The only thing that worked was to crack the faceshield open a bit -- but that won't be useful the colder it gets. Anyone found a remedy for this?

Ive ridden mine in all sorts of temps. Never had this problem...

[Snarky]

I actually had no idea about the chin spoiler until this thread.

Originally Posted by Duelsporter

So after riding with the XD-4 for a week now, I'm still liking pretty much everything about it. The one negative comment is that the face shield fogs worse than any helmet I've ever had. It was 62 degrees F here today, and it still fogged with every breath. Didn't matter what combination of vents open / closed I tried. The only thing that worked was to crack the faceshield open a bit -- but that won't be useful the colder it gets. Anyone found a remedy for this?

Keep it clean. If that doesn't work. Grab some defogger (get a good one) or a pinlock shield. It's actually been the least foggy helmet I've ever had. It was in the 40's this morning, and I had no problems. My advice is to keep it open till you're ready to go, if your loading your bike or whatnot and breathing heavily, water will condense inside.

Things I don't like about this helmet:
Those little plastic vents on top are rather fragile. They did not like the laboratory floor, despite being in a helmet sack.

Thing I do like about this helmet:
I came off my bike and hit my head on a rock. Both my head and helmet came out of it with no damage. I have no doubt that in a more serious incident I would still be protected.

[Duelsporter]

I read somewhere that sometimes the release agents from the faceshield molding process can make the material susceptible to fogging. Don't know if that's true or not, but I removed the shield and cleaned it thoroughly with a vinegar and water solution. Then I applied a shield defogging product called Zooke I bought at a bike show some time ago. While it didn't eliminate the fogging completely, it has reduced it significantly. At least for now.