Advance HAWK Black Matte Full Face Modular Motorcycle Helmet – Size : Medium

Review by V. Fabro for Advance HAWK Black Matte Full Face Modular Motorcycle Helmet – Size : Medium
Rating:
I bought this helmet on LeatherUp.com, and given all the 5-star reviews there I’ll be surprised if my review doesn’t get pulled from the site. But I thought I’d better warn people with my experience.

I bought 2 of these helmets last July, using 1 as my main helmet and another for the wife who’s only rode with me a few times. This April, almost 9 months later, my helmet’s flip-up joints stopped working correctly, so that the face shield won’t stay up on its own (i.e. you flip it up and it falls right back down). Not a problem, since I had my wife’s helmet. I used that for a couple of weeks, and then the bolt that holds the flip-up module to the helmet popped out, stripped threads.

I called LeatherUp about this, and of course there’s only a 30-day warranty. I asked if they had spare parts so I could repair it. They asked me to email them a detailed explanation of what’s wrong, with pictures. So I removed the flip-up face shields from the helmets and was stunned by the dangerously flimsy construction. There are copper/brass bolts that hold the flip-up module to the helmet, and those screw into a nut inside the helmet that only has about 2 rows of threads to screw into; 3 of the 4 bolts on the 2 helmets had already pulled out of those threads! That same copper/brass bolt is a cylinder so that another bolt can screw into it. The threads inside the cylinder were almost entirely stripped on 3 of the 4 bolts! It’s amazing that the flip-up module was still attached to either helmet! In addition, there’s a plastic “arm” attached at the same bolt, and it has the stops that hold the flip-up module up when you raise it. The “arms” are made of extremely thin plastic, and (once again) 3 out of the 4 arms on the 2 helmets were broken! After seeing the construction of these helmets I am absolutely stunned that no one else has posted similar problems!

Now to be fair, the helmets are definitely cheap, but they’re built so cheaply that I question their DOT certification. Also on the positive side the helmets fit me very well and were surprisingly quiet. But I now have no confidence whatsoever in the Hawk line of helmets.