A New Product Note from Alex the Parts Guy:

We recently started carrying a cool new line of helmets, Sparx.  The first time I laid hands on one, I figured it was another 300-something-dollar Shoei competitor. After all, they’ve got plush fully-removable liners, a simple shield change mechanism, well-applied contemporary graphics, even Arai-style brow vents in the faceshield. I was wrong, though. This is all available in a $110 helmet, or $130 for the snazzy graphics.

Best of all, these are safe helmets. Like most thinking riders, my eyes were opened and my mind thoroughly blown by Dexter Ford’s article, Blowing The Lid Off in Motorcyclist Magazine a few years back. That article challenged the wisdom and the science behind the Snell Foundation’s helmet testing procedures, and through fresh testing with real-world crash data as the basis, found that the Snell tests were creating unnecessarily hard helmets that transfer too much energy to the wearer’s head. The helmets that were found to be the safest in Motorcyclist’s independent testing were those that carried US DOT and European ECE certification. Sparx helmets carry both.

(Sales pitch aside, I strongly encourage everyone who wears a helmet - and that’s all of you, right? - to read this article. It’s a long one, so settle in with the beverage of your choice. But it’s easily the best article written about the most important piece of gear you wear. It changed my mind: I stopped wearing my Snell KBC and bought a DOT/ECE Shark RSi, the helmet that we all wear at the shop, and which is easily the best helmet to grace my prodigious melon.)

Additionally, Sparx has a crash replacement program: if you have a get-off and damage your lid, send your busted bucket and a police report to Sparx and they’ll send you a fresh new helmet, easy as that. This is one freebie program, though, that I hope none of my customers ever get the opportunity to use.

So, in all, this is a very high quality helmet loaded with features for which you’d expect to pay twice as much, in one of the safest helmets available. Good stuff.

And, for the record, I’ll try to make better use of this space for more notes like this in the future. Watch this space.

Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled PAG page…

We’re keeping the big sale on all in-stock gear rolling along.  All of the gear and apparel from your favorite brands is on sale, and there’s so much stuff we can’t begin to list it all here.  But we’ll try: mesh jackets, textile jackets, leather jackets, and everything in between; helmets, gloves, and pants; communications stuff, gadget mounting gizmos, even windshields (!).  In short, all sorts of cool stuff.  Give us a call if you’re looking for something in particular, or swing on by to browse the selection.

Of course, we are stocked up on Genuine BMW parts for servicing your bike whether it be an Airhead, Oilhead, Hexhead, single or K-bike. We can get any BMW part you need.

We carry the full lines for First Gear, Teknic and MotoGP riding apparel as well as Nolan, Arai, KBC helmets, and a whole host of other parts, accessories and gear. Our apparel department is stocked with a broad selection of the gear we offer, and we can special order anything you have in mind. Just give us a call or email Alex to talk gear.

Be sure to keep your eyes on our Motorrad STL eBay store for even more good stuff - Olympia jackets, Gerbing heated liners, NOS BMW parts and accessories, and more on the way all the time. We’re getting into the swing of this eBay thing, and the virtual store gets more inventory all the time.