Hi folks,
I've seen some folks here & there in various scooting forums ask about scooter skirts, mitts & their impact on riding.
Being curious along those lines myself I ordered the the Scooter Mate, Body Mate, & Mitts from Peak Scooter (
http://www.peakscooter.com/)
First some disclaimers:
I did them all using my winter gloves, leather jacket, jeans and helmet. Not ATGATT since that would defeat the purpose of these items (weather protection without all the gear)
Of course everybody should be ATGATT & only ride your scooter in the dry on days when there is no wind in parking lots with supervision.
If you don't do that than this my interest ya. Your results may vary. If you hurt yourself it ain't my fault, & I claim no liability
Ain't nobody paid me to write this, it'd be nice, but it hasn't happened yet.
My experience with the products is not real in depth, but I've bopped around a bit.
Here's what I've found so far.
Body Mate:
The Body Mate is not just a skirt, it's a full apron with the bib & an adjustablestrap that goes around your neck as well.
Both straps are inflexible and have a clip that connects the ends when you put it on.
There is a stiff squared out corner that fits neatly over your knees and then drops to roughly your ankles.
but straps are adjustable so it'll fit a wide range of folks.
Fit & finish seem fine, no bad seams, & it's pretty sturdy nylon as described.
The bib portion has a nice little pocket in it that I didn't use, and the whole thing will fold up into a pouch with a carrying strap.
If you use it as intended I think it looks a bit dorky, but it's actually pretty practical since it adds to wind/rain protection down the center of your jacket.
I tried it without using that, with using that & with it both over & under my jacket. My thoughts is if you're going to use it. Get over your bad self & just use it over the top as intended.
As far as weather protection goes, it did OK in a pretty hard shower I got caught in. It leaked a bit around the edges, but did help quite a bit.
My legs remained dry, & reasonably warm in mid 50ish humid weather.
The rain didn't punch through the bib to my jacket, the S200 doesn't have much a windscreen at the moment (just the OEM) so that's notable.
It takes a couple seconds to remove, take off your helmet and you're lost in the crowd of other folks, not the person trudging around in motorcycle pants.
It didn't interfere with the operation of my S200, or my wife's HD200 when she took it out for a spin.
The only item of (trivial) concern is that the bottom starts flapping a bit around 35-40ish mph. I never had the feeling that it was going to fly up or anything.
As the folks at PeakScooter note, it's pretty stiff.
Scooter Mate:
The Scooter Mate attaches to the front of the scoot using a big wide strap that goes over the shield a bit under the windscreen & a narrow one that I ran on the inside of the wheel well.
There's a single velcro strap that you attach around your waist once you're seated. This seemed a bit of a cheap out vs. the Body Mate, but in practice it worked fine.
Fit & finish were pretty good as on the Body Mate.
Unlike the Body Mate this just covers your legs, & a tetch up the waist, so your jacket's pretty much on it's own.
Riding with it and using it left me with a similar assessment to the Body Mate, good for light weather, it'll leak of it gets gnarly.
There were a couple notable differences.
- Since this attaches to the scoot it readily covered the bag of groceries I hung from my bag hook. The Body Mate was a bit more of a kludge with that.
- It seemed to flap a bit at lower speeds vs. the Body Mate
- If the front strap falls wrong it could cover your radiator air flow. This could be bad. Fortunately the S200 is air-cooled, & has a big grill to apparently keep the headlight cool...so no worries covering it a bit.
To sum up the two covers:
Of the two, I liked the Scooter Mate a bit more. Part of this was aesthetics, part was I liked leaving it on the scooter.
You can leave the Body Mate on it as well (I did) but it's that much easier for it to just blow off or be taken off by some freelance socialist.
The Body Mate is a bit more practical since it covers you better and stores in itself (as a pouch).
For aesthetics, I thought it a bit dorky but not fatally so, & I note that a local scootist was gawking at it as he rode past my wife..or maybe he just liked her. Tough to say.
Both worked as intended.
Mitts:
The folks at Peak have a product like the often lauded Hippo Hands. Since I was already ordering something I ordered a set of those.
Once again, they were well constructed, but then we get to the "fit" side of fit and finish. They also have a nifty clear window that you could see your controls through if they fit the handlebars properly. which brings up the downside.
So far I've tried them on my Burgman 650, & my S200.
On the Burger, they kinda fit, but it was a kludge. I didn't like it had some troubles getting to the controls. Nothing dangerous, but I bumped the brights on a few times with the flasher and bumped the manual shift on once as well.
On the S200 they didn't fit to the point of my test was less than two blocks.
It looks like they'll fit on the SYM HD200, so I'll probably give that a shot this weekend. If they don't I will return them unless someone local wants to take 'em off my hands (
).
As far as how they performed on the burger. My hands were warm & dry at freeway speeds. I did like them enough that I'm probably going to poke around for something that fits the burger better.
So if they fit they are the $h!t. If they don't, than as the Parisians are known to cest' ... "La Vie".
Cheers
Tromper
