Armor up!

After months of hesitation, I finally bought a new riding suit. My 2012 Icon Overlord Prime jacket and pants combo is a significant improvement over my 1980’s Dainese suit. Here’s what I think about the two suits.

Protection

This is of course the most important aspect of any riding suit. The Overload is better here in every way than the Dainese. First off, the leather used on the Overlord is 1.2 to 1.4 mm thick. I’m not sure about the Dainese, but the leather certainly feels thinner.

The Dainese has some old and soft foam in the shoulders and elbows that is pretty useless for protection. The knee pads have a pocket for padding, and I added some closed cell foam there, which is better than nothing. To add a bit more protection, I usually slip an extra Dainese Wave G back protector into the suit.

 

The Overload has:

• CE field armor in the shoulders and elbows.
• External injected plastic protection on shoulders, elbows, and back.
• Dual-density foam back pad.
• CE knee impact protectors.
• Integrated hip/thigh padding.
• Lower back padding in the pants.

I definitely feel a lot safer wearing the Overlord than with the old Dainese, although the Dainese suit would have been fine protection against sliding on asphalt. It just wouldn’t be much help if I hit anything.

Ventilation

Apart from a few perforations in the armpits and the hole where the rubber logo used to be, the Dainese doesn’t have any ventilation. Opening the zipper would cool me down, but also significantly reduce protection. My best cooling trick would be to tilt my head down just right and twist my shoulders to lift the jacket off my back. That would allow air down the neck and into the back of the jacket. Ahhh… So refreshing…

The Overlord has plenty of ventilation:

• Mesh under the armpits.
• The leather is heavily perforated down the sides and under the arms.
• The front and back of the jacket is perforated.
• Leather on the forearms is perforated.
• Leather on the pants is perforated around the thigh.

Note that while the perforations in the front, back and forearms are better than nothing, they are not nearly as effective as you might think because the perforation does not go all the way through the jacket. The elbow armor blocks most of the holes in the forearm. The foam pad blocks most of the holes in the back. Most of the holes in the front are blocked by the zipper and pocket.

Oh, and the head tilting trick also works with the Overlord jacket. w00t!

Thermal Insert

The drawback of all that ventilation is that when the air is cold, I get cold as well. The Overlord does have an extra insulation layer that you can zip into the jacket, but it’s not that effective, and only covers the torso and not the armpits or arms.

The thermal insert does add some protection, but when it gets really cold (for Flordia :-)), I wear thermal underwear and an extra t-shirt or two, which is what I would wear with the Dainese as well.

Boot Overlap

One of the reasons I was attracted to the Overlord suit was that the pants went over the boots. That meant that I could wear just about any boot with the pants. With all of the other two piece suits that I tried on, I could wear shoes that didn’t cover the ankles (very unsafe), or I would need special riding boots that were big enough to fit over the shin armor, but those are not comfortable to wear for walking.

My Dainese suit didn’t have shin armor, so I was able to fasten my boot over the bottom of the suit, although the pants would often ride up and rest on the top of the boot, rather than stay under the boot. That worked okay but left a gap between the boot and pants.

Cuffs

The locking forearm zipper is my favorite feature on the 
Overlord suit. The Dainese suit has a snap fastener to keep the zipper closed, while other suits I looked at had Velcro or snap fasteners.

With the locking zipper, just snap the pull tab down and it’s locked. Then lift up the pull tab and it’s unlocked! No need to do anything else besides zip up, or unzip. It’s a minor detail, but one that I appreciate every time I put on that jacket.

Jacket to Pants Zipper

This is the device that prevents the jacket from riding up and exposing my tender flesh when I’m sliding down the asphalt on my back at 50 mph.

The Dainese jacket is attached to the pants with a very sturdy metal zipper that goes almost all the way around and has proven to be extremely durable. The zipper is attached directly on to the jacket and the pants. Gathered stretch panels just below the zipper on the pants provides the flexibility to keep the suit fitting well when standing upright or hunched over the bike. That arrangement has worked very well.

The Icon suit uses a plastic zipper that goes 4/5 of the way around. Like on the Dainese, the zipper is attached directly to the pants, but on the jacket, the zipper is attached to a strip of stretchy fabric.

I wonder how well the zipper is going to hold the jacket down when I’m sliding down the street on my back. Perhaps it’s a non issue because the Icon jacket is sufficiently rigid to prevent it moving around too much. Hopefully I will never have to find out.

Sizing

The Dainese fits me perfectly. The arms are the perfect length for me, the pants stop just above the ankle. Finding something that fit me as well was very difficult. All of the stores that I went to had a large selection of L through to XXL, with a few M. I wear an S size jacket. When I finally found the Overlord jacket at a Cycle Gear in S, I was delighted to see that it fit. The problem was the pants. According to the sizing chart, even the shortest length pants were going to be too long, and they were awfully thin around the waist. Of course, nobody had those pants in the store for me to try on.

In the end, I took a gamble and ordered the smallest waist size that I thought I could wear, even though the inseam was going to be too long for me. 32″ waist, 33″ inseam. When the pants arrived, they were indeed too long – the knee padding was way too low. However, the waist was roomier that I expected, so I asked the shop to keep the larger pants handy (just in case the smaller size was an ever worse fit) and order one size smaller: 30″ waist, 32″ inseam.

The 30″ waist is a little snug on my 32″ belly, but the 32″ length is fine; the knee pads are in the right place, and I’m not stepping on the pants when I walk. I just have to be careful not to get any fatter!

Waist Adjustment

Something that I really like about the Dainese is that there is a Velcro belt that I can use to tighten the waist on the suit after zipping it up.

The waist size can be adjusted on the Overload too, using a couple of snap fasteners on the sides. However, these are very stiff and difficult to get to once the jacket is zipped up making them fairly useless to me. On the other hand, the jacket is already very snug, so no need to make it even more snug.

Other factors

Weight

The Overlord is almost two and a half times heavier than the Dainese.

Dainese	4.6 lbs	2.0 kg
Icon Overlord	10.8 lbs	4.9 kg

I guess all that extra protection adds weight. However, since it’s distributed over the body, it’s not really noticeable.

Lockability

The belt loop on the Dainese was just the right size to allow me to lock the suit on to the bike’s helmet lock. To take the jacket, a thief would have to break the belt loop, or cut the leather, which is sufficient deterrent for most thieves. (Although I forgot to lock up the suit one day at Disney World, and nobody stole my jacket. Being old and worn out is another excellent deterrent!)

I have yet to find an equally good system to lock up the Overload jacket.

Pockets

The Overlord has a single large inner pocket and two smaller outer pockets. The smaller pockets are big enough for a cell phone or a small wallet (mine is tiny), but I expect that anything in those pockets is going to get wet in the rain. Everything in the larger pocket is probably going to get soaked as well, due to the perforations in the leather.

The Dainese as two large inner pockets that are a bit more protected against water than the Overlord suit.

Rain

I know that the Dainese can suck up a lot of water before soaking through to me, and even when soaking wet, it provides good protection against the wind. I’ve been through hours of steady rain and through hurricane squalls, and the suit kept me fairly comfortable.

So far, I’ve only experienced brief, light rain with the Overlord suit. I expect to get much colder and wetter than with the un-perforated Dainese leather. Time will tell.

Brammo

One of the reasons why I considered buying Icon gear is because of their sponsorship of Brammo’s racing team. I looked at a lot of other suits, but ended up with the Overlord because I liked the look, the company had a reputation for decent gear, and buying Icon is a way to support Brammo.

Made in Italy

Call me old fashioned, but I find a certain charm with buying stuff that isn’t made in China. My old Dainese suit is made in Italy (the newer Dainese suits I saw at Cycle Gear were made in Pakistan, or some other place). The Overlord is made in China. At least I can say that my Empulse is be made in America.

Lucky Charm?

While examining all the cool new features of the suit, I noticed a little pocket sewn into the inner pocket of the jacket. Imagine my surprise when, rather than some interesting piece of life saving technology, out popped a Saint Christopher medallion.

A brief internet search reveled this article by Gabe Ets-Hokin on motorcycledaily.com about what that thing is doing in a modern motorcycle jacket. I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised; the company is called Icon after all.

Conclusion

It is with a fond farewell that I relegate my old Dainese suit to the closet. It kept me protected against the elements and insect strikes for years, requiring only a few minor repairs. Thankfully I never had to rely on the suit beyond that.

The Icon Overlord Prime a much better suit that the old Dainese. It offers significantly more protection and has some very nice new features (locking zippers, outer pockets, over the boot pants).

I thought that my Dainese suit looked great (although a bit dated), and I really like the look of the Overlord. I expect the new suit to look totally fantastic riding on a “True Blood Red” Empulse. (Soon… real soon now…)