You may have spent good money on a beautiful, high-end, well-designed motorcycle helmet, but if you don’t clean and maintain it properly, it will become a funky, grimy, beat-up brain bucket way before it’s time. Check out our guide on how to wash a motorcycle helmet the right way, and protect your investment!
Your motorcycle helmet has a big job to do. It not only needs to protect you in a crash, but it also needs to protect your face from debris and bugs on the road, insulate your head from the weather, and be comfortable for hours at a time, month after month, for years. High quality helmets can do all that, no problem – but you have to do your part so they don’t turn into a funky, grimy, scratched up mess!
In this article, we’ll show you how to protect your motorcycle helmet investment, the best way to deep clean your helmet (no matter what kind of helmet it is), and how to maintain it properly for the long haul. Let’s get started!
The Fastest Way To Ruin a Helmet
There’s the good kind of funk, and the bad kind of funk. Parliament and the Ohio Players? Good funk. The way your two year-old helmet smells after a long ride in warm weather? Bad funk. You see, helmets absorb a lot of sweat and body oils over long term use, which permeates the liner and foam and causes an odor that can make a helmet pretty unpleasant after a while.
And that’s just the inside of the helmet. On the outside, you’ve got bug guts, dust, buildup of soot and smog, rain, grimy fingerprints, and more to deal with. A helmet that gets used the way it’s supposed to is going to take a beating – that’s just how it is.
But despite all that, what damages helmets most isn’t any of those things – it’s actually improper maintenance done by people trying to clean them. Bug guts are nasty, but won’t actually damage your helmet; but cleaning them with solvent or scrubbing them with an abrasive cloth will. The fact is, most helmet problems we see are caused by either improper maintenance, or a lack of it altogether.
That’s why it’s so important to know how to, and how not to take care of your helmet. Not maintaining your helmet properly is bad; doing it wrong is even worse.
The Basic Do’s and Don’ts of Helmet Care:
Even you don’t read anything else in this article, read through these helmet care do’s and don’ts. Many people clean their helmets the wrong way or using the wrong products, and end up doing more harm than good. If you follow these simple guidelines, you’ll be in good shape.
