One-piece suits? Opinions please...

[Genestho]

Hey Girls

Making a decision this week as to whether I shall buy a 2010 ex250 Ninja, (first "roadbike") for trackdays only, not interested in Road Riding.

Just wondering if there are some opinions on one piece race suits?

I fell in love with a Dainese one piece, but I doubt there'll be one in NZ (searched already), and for the price is it really necessary to have something so high end?
Quite like Rev-it gear too, just the bit of femininity with practicality.

Thoughts most welcome, cheers

[Bikemad]

Hi TGW..........recently got into track days myself and bought a one piece teknic suit to do so..........all good out on the track but find it difficult when you come in ( and your all hot n sweaty like) to get the top part off and on again between sessions.
Next time i think i would go for a two piece zip together type

[Mom]

Hey there, I would go for the zip together variety of gear mate. As posted above the hot and sweaty thing could pose a problem and lets not forget the going to the toilet thing that us chickies have to do from time to time, not an easy feat to get a full suit down enough within the confines of a port-a-loo Mind you a she-wee might overcome that problem too

[Bikemad]

ok Mom...........ill ask..........whats a she wee???

[Stirts]

ok Mom...........ill ask..........whats a she wee???

I feel a thread dredge coming up......

[Genestho]

Haha, beat me to it Bikemad!!

Thanks I hadn't considered a zip together option! Might research this option.
Any reccomended brands guys? Cheers

[Mom]

ok Mom...........ill ask..........whats a she wee???

I feel a thread dredge coming up......

Never

Haha, beat me to it Bikemad!!

Thanks I hadn't considered a zip together option! Might research this option.
Any reccomended brands guys? Cheers

Feast your eyes

http://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/sh...hlight=she-wee

[Bikemad]

hmmmm..........think i have read enough..........just poses more questions that i dont really wanna ask
ok.....so whats a thread dredge then

[Quasievil]

I thought you might be interested in this taken from our site, but this is generic in its application for any brand, thought it might help

Want to Buy a one piece?
If this is the first time you’ve been in the market for a leather one piece race suit or jacket and pants for that matter, you’re likely going into the experience with little information and a lot of questions. Most of QUASiMOTO customers come to us looking for a suit armed with recommendations and advice from friends, many of whom also have no idea what makes up a good fitting, quality suit. We’re not asking you to ignore those recommendations or your own opinions, because they may in the end weigh the heaviest in your decision on what to buy, but take a moment to consider some new information your buddies may not be passing on to you.A one or two piece leather suit is usually a relatively significant investment for most riders. The cost alone is the reason so many riders don’t own a suit, let alone a good quality jacket. It’s safe to say that a majority of street motorcycle riders ride with less than ideal riding gear. Given that fact, riding with any real protective gear other than a helmet is a step above the rest. Nevertheless, our opinion is that you should own and use the best quality riding gear that you can afford. Beyond that, your gear should fit your needs, your riding style and most of all it should fit you.We are often asked what the difference is between the low end and high end gear. It comes down to the amount of features the suit has, the quality of the leather, the quality of the interior of the suit, the quality of the armor (if the suit features any), the type and amount of stitching in the suit. The more expensive the materials and the more time needed to make the suit, will make up the cost of the suit. Like anything, you tend to get what you pay for and poorly made suits will not only protect you less, but won’t last as long just during the regular use of the suit.Features to look for in a suit include:

Leather type, either cowhide, buffalo or even kangaroo or goat
Leather thickness and suit weight
Type of venting and perforation features
Type of padding and protection
Type of spine protection, aero hump, or inserts
Slider type and hardness
Type and quantity of stitching
Internal lining, removability
Insert pockets or snap-ins for back protectors
Stretch material used
The first thing you need to understand about motorcycle protective gear is that leather, whether cowhide or kangaroo skin, is always more protective than any type of textile (fabric) material currently available. Textile motorcycle gear is light weight and therefore comfortable, easy to get in and out of and breaths well, but there is a reason that no pro or amateur racer today is using textile gear on the track. Textile suits and jackets do not protect riders as well as leather in a crash. Today’s suit manufacturers do use textile materials in parts of the suit that rarely experience impact or stress, such as under the arms, the groin and of course in the lining of a suit.The qualities of leather make it a very difficult material to burn or tear in a crash slide situation. This isn’t to say that textile jackets and pants shouldn’t be owned and used for regular street riding, but of the two, leather offers more protection. Various types of leather and a wide range of leather thickness is used across all manufacturers.You can really look at a leather suit as a 2nd, very thick skin, that is worn over your body. Sewn into this skin, in any serious leather suit, will be protective strategically placed armor for even more protection and then stretch panels and liners for comfort and cooling. In a crash situation, the leather protects from impact force that would otherwise tear your skin and sliding abrasion that would otherwise scrape your skin off. Impact armor is there to absorb as much of any impact energy as possible.Higher end leather tends to be thinner and soft, therefore lighter and more comfortable for the rider, than heavy-weight leather. Thin, soft leather also takes less time for the suit to break-in than heavy weight leather. Thin leather, taken to the extreme may be comfortable, but can also no longer be fully protective, or if it is, is only a ‘one-crash’ garment.Leather suits are typically offered in “one piece” and “two piece” varieties. One piece suits provide the best protection of the two types, due to the fact that there are less seams that can be subject to tearing during an impact situation. A two piece suit is slightly more versatile than a one piece suit, since it can be unzipped at the waist and be ridden as a jacket alone.
Increasingly, hi-tech suit manufacturers such as QUASiMOTO feature injection molded hard-plastic protection on their suits, or TPU, combining leather protection with impact-absorbing hard body armor. This brings us to the topic of armor. Body armor is the part of the suit designed to protect the rider’s body from hard impact with the ground or other objects. Many leather riding jackets on the market today have no body armor in them at all. The other important part of a suit or jacket is the impact absorbing armor. Higher end suits today use “CE Approved” hard plastic and/or multi-layored memory foam armor inserts at these impact areas. Utilizing hard armor and various types of foam and padding, creates an energy absorbing zone through out the suit, protecting the rider during heavy direct impact crashes. You will find that many sellers of motorcycle gear claim to be using CE Approved Armor when infact it isnt, this is especially true in sellers involved with Trademe or other web based auction sales, normally these sellers claim many things which is incorrect and misleading.Protection zones to look at include:

Shoulders
Elbows
Spine
Hips
Knees
Shins
Chest
Thighs

[Quasievil]

QUASiMOTO higher ends suits, now offer exterior hard plastic or Titanium protection in certain areas. This serves to protect the rider even more by putting the protection inserts as the first point of contact with the impact object.The bare bones distinction between a high quality suit and low quality suit can be said to be the quality of the leather and the quality of the stitching. A high quality well-made suit can withstand the most brutal of slides and still stay together, protecting the riders skin. Lessor quality leather matched with poor stitching is what causes a suit to ‘blow up’, or come apart on a rider during a crash. It takes a certain amount of skill, learned proprietary knowledge and craft to produce a suit will live up to the task.Next to protection, what any suit or jacket spends most of its time doing is keeping you comfortable. Mainly, this means that the suit should fit you well, so that you will want to wear it. An overly heavy suit with no venting on a hot day, won’t be your first choice when you go to suit up for a day’s ride in the street. An overly uncomfortable suit will also have the affect of being a distraction to your riding when you are on the bike. You want your suit to fit as good as possible.Sizing. Especially when ordering online, sizing questions are one of the first things on people’s minds. As a retailer with both a web site and a retail showroom of our products, we don’t necessarily recommend that that you go and try on a suit at your local dealer and buy the item from us. Kinda tacky and most motorcycle dealerships don’t offer a wide variety of sizes in their showroom for you anyway. QUASiMOTO stocks a range of gear, unlike other stores who only special order their inventory, Our sales team can also guide you through the fitting process either on the phone or by email and help you select the right product. Sizing across all manufacturers varies. When we speak to customers on the phone who don’t know what size they are, the questions we ask are:

What’s your height
What’s your weight
What size suit or jacket do you wear
What’s your waist size
Whats your chest measurement
Using these questions we can usually get the sizing right in a few seconds. This is, however, as long as the rider isn’t exceptionally built in the shoulder, stomach or thigh areas. Some, though few, riders will simply not fit well in any off the shelf suit.You want your suit to fit as snug as possible, even to the point of being a little constraining. At QUASiMOTO we preach that your new leather suit should at first be border-line uncomfortable when you first try it on. A new suit will give a half a size to a size after a few times of using the suit. Leather gives to an extent to form to the rider’s shape and size. First time suit buyers are typically lost when it comes to trying on suits because they want the suit to fit perfectly the moment they try it on. A good fitting suit should be very snug on the few times of use. A perfectly fitting suit has few creases, baggy points and folds, yet is just snug enough to be a little tight on the rider. You shouldn’t be able to grab a hand full of leather easily and bunch it up in your hand if the suit is fitting well. The suit should fit as well as possible, like a second skin, tight to your body.The other point that first-time suit owners often overlook is that your suit is designed to fit you best when riding the bike. You’re not going to use your suit to go out to pick apples or go on a date and although showing up at your favorite rider gathering area and posing in a full race suit looks cool, that’s not what a well made suit is designed for and we hope that’s not playing in your purchasing decision. A race suit is designed to be in the riding position, leaned over and aggressively positioned. It’s designed to fit the rider comfortably while riding the bike. We speak with folks all the time who get the suit on and complain they can’t raise their arms over their head. Ok- great! you’re not going to want your arms flailing over you head if you get off the bike- you’ll want some restriction there.When considering the features of a suit, you’ll realize quick that the higher cost suits offer the most advanced features. If you can’t spring for the big buck suit, you can still get a quality protective suit that fits, without having to settle for a low end suit that will come part on you while riding, or just plain be uncomfortable while riding. The full range of QUASiMOTO suits is designed to fit within most riders’ budgets and still offer world-class features such as CE Approved armor, soft leather, venting and interior lining.Another important point to consider is that there are a multitude of suit manufacturers on the market today. A good amount of them utilize the racing scene as a marketing and sales tool for their products. It makes good sense to look at which riders are riding with what suit brand, because these guys have careers and lives to protect and they crash all the time. They want to be around at the finish line, but realize too, that pro racers usually have custom suits built for them by their sponsors. What your favorite pro racer is wearing may or may not be available to the average rider. Suit makers also use their sponsored riders for product testing and product development. Many of the suits worn by pro racers are not yet available to the public, because the manufacturer puts time, money and energy into getting feedback from their sponsored riders for products that are not yet released yet. This information is then taken back to the lab and used to build next generation protection products. We hope that this information helps you in making your decision, if you need help call us or email us or if you can come and see us, we are happy to work with you to get you into your new QUASiMOTO suit.

[kiwifruit]

QMoto FTW. You could get a sv650 for the same money, wouldn't be any harder (probably easier) to learn on.

[Trudes]

I find a one piece a lot more comfortable for track riding and they're not too hard to pull down to halfway, zip it up a bit and waddle about with the arms slapping your bum when you get a bit warm between sessions. If you were planning on doing road riding I'd go for a jacket and pants and zip them together, but for the track I recommend a one piece. Go custom made if you can afford it, that way it'll fit properly, be the right length in the arms and legs etc and all the armour will sit in the correct spots and do their job properly if you come off. I'd also recommend going for lots of ventilation in non-vital spots like under arms and behind your knees etc, it seems softer and will keep you cooler and if it's a cool day just chuck a light jumper or thermals underneath.

[Genestho]

LOL Mom (and PB!!!) crikey!!

Quasi, cheers for that, I checked out your site on my travels, and read your info, as a potential customer thankyou, really good advice in there mate, cheers

Fruity, funny you say that, I found an SV650 in taupo....mmmmmm would sound yummy, perfectly run in, lowered and lady owner, another option....!! (Doh)

Cheers Trudes! I would've thought a one piece would be less hassle....

[helenoftroy]

Hi T.G.W!
A race bike! heaps of fun....
I started off with very cheap zip together Frank Thomas leathers that I got off Trade-me.....all good till I nearly destroyed them!

Brought new Arlen Ness one piece race leathers in London last year while visiting my daughter

They are awesome,great fit & comfortable

Remember to have room for your back protector,hump isnt enough IMHO

Have fun shopping

Trudes has some great advice on wot to wear underneath etc

[Genestho]

Hi T.G.W!
A race bike! heaps of fun....
I started off with very cheap zip together Frank Thomas leathers that I got off Trade-me.....all good till I nearly destroyed them!

Brought new Arlen Ness one piece race leathers in London last year while visiting my daughter

They are awesome,great fit & comfortable

Remember to have room for your back protector,hump isnt enough IMHO

Have fun shopping

Trudes has some great advice on wot to wear underneath etc

Ahh ok, thanks H.O.T!
I want full body armour, lol (can you get that? lol) Going to try some stuff on next week! weeeeeeeeeeee

SO.. TRUDES.... what does one wear?