Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1176510
ARAI HELMET FACTORY TOUR P98 Feature It's important to note each shell is designed to have the maximum amount of fiberglass and the minimum amount of resin, part of the reason the first surface is rough and requires so many steps to get it ready for paint. If the helmet has more resin than needed, the surface would be smoother, but the helmet itself would be heavier and weaker. By the time it's ready for the graphics, the helmet will have gained 25 grams in weight, (Left) Rennie asks Aki Arai when the Cycle News replica is coming. Short answer, never. (Below) The EPS liner technician can knock out about 250 jobs a day if he's on it. Getting the liner in is all about technique rather than brute strength. equivalent to about the weight of four quarters. But then comes an interesting piece—the wet layering of graphics, done almost exclusively by female hands. Getting a Nicky Hayden or Dani Pedrosa replica to look the way it does is an exacting pro- cess, one on that is completed almost entirely by women. Arai says its female graphics workers have more patience, more fi- nesse, and ultimately do a better job at laying the intricate sheet graphic designs than their male counterparts, who can get agi- tated too quickly and thus don't do as good a job. If watching a shell being cre- ated is beautiful in an industrial sense, seeing these ladies take a plain white Arai Corsair- X and craft it into a Doohan, Nakagami or Roberts replica is gorgeous in the artistic sense. It's eerily quiet as they work. Only the sounds of moving trollies and the machine in the background popping rivets for the chin strap locators breaking the silence in the cleanest area of any of the four Arai factories we visit. Nearly all the graphics are laid by hand, although some, like the Freddie Spencer 30th Anniversa- ry Corsair-X, are painted by hand. And yes, every helmet is given a final spray and polish by hand. "We are not very good busi- nessmen," Mitch Arai says in an entirely self-effacing manner. "We understand that many of the processes we do will cost us money, but we believe in them because they are not carried out by machines—they carried out by our people." An example of this is the man who fits the EPS liner. After the shell is drilled for the visor, chin strap and ventilation points, the helmet is sent to the EPS em- ployee who carefully pushes the multi-density EPS liner into the shell, lining up the vent holes and getting it ready for the final stages in construction that include fitting