Scratch Build – In Progress One Piece Motorbike Suit

I'm not sure how long it's going to take, it's not something I'm going to rush, my life depends on it. I think I'm probably looking at months before the final suit is completed.

Having looked at the links Aradeth posted I think I'm going to have to modify my design a bit. It also seems that stretchy cordura is; A not all that stretchy, B hard to find in reasonable thickness and C not as protective as straight cordura.

This leaves me with a problem, central to the design of the suit are the stretch panels around the waist and bum but it seems that the highest risk area is also the bum so it needs the most protection. I've thought of a couple of possible solutions, one is to use stuff called keprotec which is similar to cordura but with more stretch, the downside is that again it's hard to find in suitable thickness, it's also scarily expensive (~£80 per meter as opposed to about £15 for stretch cordura).

The other possibility I'm looking at is stainless steel (or maybe titanium for weight) chain mail. With the chain mail I would sew it to a non-protective, stretchy backing in a compressed form (rings moved towards each other), as the material stretched the rings would move back into their normal, extended, position. I like this idea because it would be very protective as well as damn cool. The downside is that I would need to put a piece of foam or maybe the sheet form of the d3o armour behind the chain mail to avoid discomfort. Anybody have any experience of chain mail, making or using? BT is a pretty diverse place.

Moriquendi

 

Chain mail would be more likely to catch something. It also heats up under friction.

 

Hi,

Interesting. Struggling to see the point, given the ready availability of big and tall stuff and the fact that a custom suit will only cost you £4-500, but nevertheless curious to see how this will turn out. I certainly don't have the skill to do this.
Just out of interest, what makes you think a 1pc suit will be less time consuming to put on/remove than a 2pc? Never heard anyone say that before.

Cheers

 

Hi,

Missed this so will reply in a new post.

Chain mail is a bad idea. It is not actually very efficient in terms of absorption or general protection.
I know a few guys who used to wear chainmail (cruiser wearers, natch) bare against their skin and what happened when they crashed was interesting. Basically, lots of bruising in fairly low-speed accidents. It has a habit of skidding a lot more than kevlar/leather as well as heating up. Depending on the quality of the mesh, it can become quite sharp when abraded, as well as become quite dangerous if it breaks or become loose in any way (it tends to have some heft to it). This is not likely to apply to you, of course, but I would never trust it against bone or core tissues, especially anywhere near my spine.
In danger areas, stick to CE padding. I wouldn't put anything hard behind padding, but that's more common sense than scientific observation.

As a day-to-day material, aside from offering little protective worth, chainmail suffers in wet & windy weather (you will get cold fast) and is unacceptably heavy. It is likely to exacerbate the weakness of areas where the seams will naturally be under more pressure (stretch points) and is therefore more likely to cause catastrophic failure of the suit. It is also not cheap, generally speaking, and requires expert construction if you want it to be any good. Titanium chainmail will be lighter but will cost an absolute fortune.

In terms of the bum, where are you going to put the stretch panels? I imagine you can get away with stretchy panels below and possibly above the glute without negatively impacting the amount of padding around major areas ie. buttocks, coccyx and hips. You don't need a whole lot of stretch, you will never get the same sort of mobility in a 1pc suit as you will a 2pc zipped set.

What is your reasoning behind making the suit out of cordura/textile, by the way? Just cheapness?

Good luck!

 

The plan with the chain mail would be to sew it to an underlying fabric, each ring would be sewn to the fabric making it less likely to catch. I would probably sandwich it between two layers actually so it wouldn't be able to catch on anything. I'm also looking at machine made 'mail using welded rings which should be fairly snag free.

Duckies, most of your questions have already been answered. I'd love to know where I can buy a custom made suit for £500 of similar quality, you'd be lucky to buy a decent off the peg suit for that. An aerostich roadcrafter (widely regarded as about the best one piece suit for commuting/touring) comes in at £550 without import duty, shipping or any tailoring. The rev-it infinity suit costs £850.

The problem with fitting is that I'm both very tall and fairly slim, I have tried on every one-piece suit I've come across and none of them fit comfortably.

The chain mail is for abrasion protection only, it would be backed up with a waterproof fabric and probably some sort of soft armour to reduce bruising. It won't be used in the structure of the suit, that strength would be provided by the underlying fabric. Skidding is fine provided the suit doesn't wear through, chain mail is ideal in that situation. The cost is also fairly reasonable, one square foot of welded titanium chain mail can be bought for $40. The 'mail only has to survive one crash, it's condition after the crash is not important provided it protects me in the crash. Motorbike clothing, like helmets, should be regarded as a sacrificial item, it dies so that you live. If I crash and the suit gets shredded but I walk away unscathed then I will be a very happy man.

CE padding provides impact protection only, no abrasion protection, it's just foam after all.

The placement of the panels can be seen in the pictures in earlier posts.

You can get just as much mobility out of a one piece suit as a two piece, look at the aerostich as an example. Putting on a one piece suit is quicker than a two piece suit because you don't need to take off your boots, it takes me about three minuets to put on my current gear, an aerostich can be put on in ten seconds.

Again, the pros and cons of cordura/textile vs leather have been discussed in earlier posts.

Moriquendi

 

Depends how willing you are to step away from big brands, really.
Protek are a UK company that does a 2 piece textile suit for £270 made to measure, though it's more of a sport style. (link: http://www.protekclothing.com/ProductView.aspx?id=172919&v=2960&h=2953&madetomeasure=1)

Teiz do a good line in 1 piece textiles at around the $300 mark, though you have to get them imported from the US. They're not bad, and they'll also do custom tailoring jobs, so I hear (you'll have to ring up). Not sure about import costs, would have thought it'd be under $150 though.
You can look at suits like the Olympia Phantom which are around $400 (review here http://www.webbikeworld.com/r3/olympia-moto-sports/phantom/). There's the Joe Rocket Survivor suit too at around $400 (http://battlefieldbiker.com/Review-Joe-Rocket-Survivor-Suit for review).
I'm sure you've done all this research, but you get the drift.

Ah, I see now. Wasn't entirely sure what you were going to be doing with the stuff. Chainmail would probably be fine for abrasion, from what I've seen it holds up as well as you'd expect. In terms of making it, you're probably better off with the machine made stuff, hand-'weaved' mesh would be a little too flimsy here I think unless you've got lots and lots of time on your hands and are friends with ren faire people.

Definitely a cool idea, assuming it doesn't affect any padding in a crash. Alternatively, have you considered kevlar or leather patches?

Yes, perhaps mobility was the wrong word, flexibility would be a better term. One pieces are just a little bit more unwieldy, especially if you've nowhere to stow them when you want to get off, or if you just want to take the jacket off when it's hot. Each to their own, though.

 

I hadn't seen the protek suit, it looks interesting but there are a couple of problems with it, namely that I wouldn't be able to put it on while wearing boots. One of the main things I use the motorbike for is to go horse riding, I wear the same boots on the horse as I do on the bike and it's very irritating and time consuming to have to take the boots off, take the trousers off then put the boots back on. This is why I've designed the suit with a sip down each leg, I'll be able to unzip it all then just step out of it, even wearing boots.

The teiz suit looks good, I've seen it before but I haven't heard about them doing custom made suits, having something custom made can push up the price remarkably and I'm not sure how good a fit I could get without having trial fittings. Also, 600D cordura isn't as protective as I would like.

The JoeRocket suit doesn't appear to offer custom sizing and also doesn't have leg zips.

The final reason for making it myself is that I want to, I will enjoy making it and the satisfaction of having made it myself, I'll also learn a lot in the process.

Leather has been discussed before, it doesn't stretch (in suitable thickness) it isn't waterproof and it needs maintaining. Kevlar is good for abrasion resistance but it also doesn't stretch so isn't really suitable for those areas in my suit.

I can't fit my jacket or trousers in my panniers at the moment and I have huge panniers.

Moriquendi

 

You've got boots with laces don't you?

 

Nope, they zip up, they also come up to my knees.

Moriquendi

 

Huh I wouldn't have thought taking boots of with zips and putting them back on would add that much extra time (takes me about a minute at most to take and put on again a pair of laced boots and less with zips). Admittedly I've not tried boots that come up to my knees.

 

The problem is that the process goes something like this...

Pull trouser leg up, Unzip boot and remove, Try to find somewhere dry to put foot down, Fail, put foot on wet floor, Pull other leg up, Unzip boot, Take other boot off, Fall over, Take off trousers, Try to find somewhere to hang them, Fail, put trousers on wet floor, Put wet, soggy feet into boots and zip up, Ride horse, make fool of self, repeat process in reverse.

The boots go under the trousers which makes it take longer. I have a short set of motorbike boots but I don't like them, they leave a gap between the boot and the trouser which makes for cold legs.

Moriquendi

 

Right changing outside no need to say more I'm quite will instructed on that art.

Completely off topic but I'm guessing you are an engineer right (because of all the CAD and this)? If you are, are you in Aero by any chance (Bristol = Airbus/RR/BAe Systems...)? Also have you done any CFD on the bike out of curiosity (or would you like some done)?

 

Sometimes I change inside but the floor of the tack room is often wet too.

Yup, I am an engineer, I am in aero or I was anyway. I haven't done any CFD on the bike, I don't have the software to do it properly. If you fancy doing some I'd be happy to send you the model. I did do some FEA on the swingarms but at the moment I can only do FEA on single components, I haven't worked out how to do FEA on assemblies yet.

Moriquendi

 

I've no longer got access to Ansys Workbench/CFX so I can't at the moment. I have openfoam on my desktop and plan to learn how to use it at some point when I have more time. I wouldn't mind attempting to model it in CFD at some point, although complex assemblies can a pain to do.

Anyway always nice to see another aero guy around.

 

Heh, I have too much time on my hands, I need a job

I've been doing research into chainmail and chainmail like things and I think I've come across something that would be even better. Now that stuff is made of aluminium so not directly suitable but I was thinking that if I could find some way of making it out of stainless with elastomer rings (stretchy) I would have a fantastic protective material that would stretch to allow movement.

So, can anyone think of a commonly available item (a washer or something similar) that could be bent around a ring to form that plate shape? I cant think of anything off the top of my head and the idea of making thousands of them by hand doesn't appeal much.

Moriquendi

 

The more I think about this the more I like it, here's my current idea;


Face


Back


Each "scale" would start out like this and form a plate about 10mm across. I'm currently looking into how to make several hundred of them, at the moment I'm thinking of possibly having a punch and die waterjet cut then building a ghetto punch to make them myself.

Moriquendi

 

I wouldn't worry soon I'll have too much time on my hands as well and I hate interviews. At least I'll be able to start work on restoring the triumph...

As for the chain mail/scale mesh I'd not be too keen to use it myself without doing some testing to see what happens under failure and how it effects the Cordura performance in a slide. Then again I'm a bit paranoid at times.

 

I intend to do a bit of testing. It seems that the certification test basically comprises of a belt sander and a timer so I'll knock up something similar and do some comparative testing.

Moriquendi

 

Should be interesting to see the results of those tests.

 

I'll try and video them, wont be doing them for a while yet though as I'll need to assemble samples of all the different fabrics etc to test.

Moriquendi