Original article is here
On this past Saturday’s ride, the chinstrap buckle stopped working. It would “click”, but any pressure would result in the buckle popping open and the strap coming loose. I discovered this at the beginning of the ride to my dismay, but rode anyway despite the danger. I emailed Fox on Monday, but they replied with a stock, “please call our 1-800 number so we can sell you the replacement part” message. When I asked if this was a warranty issue, they replied with a cut-and-paste of their warranty policy, indicating that I should take it back to the dealer. Seems like they’re all “corporate” and don’t handle customer service issues in the same proactive manner as some companies still rooted in their sport do nowadays (Burton and HopeTech USA are good examples of companies with excellent customer service).
The rubber keeper for the loose strap ends is gone. The rubber apparently failed and it fell off between this past ride and the ride before.
The fox head logo decals on the rear quarters of the helmet are applied over a fairly significant plane change in the sculpting of the helmet microshell, so there were wrinkles and lift-off when the helmet was new. There are a couple of missing sections of the logo now. That’s made in the PRC attention to detail.
The fitting pads are staying in place fine and are comfortable. The little adhesive Velcro dots that retain them were randomly arranged in typical low-bidder fashion, but after peeling them off carefully and reinstalling them, all is good. It would have been nice if the multiple small pads were one large, articulated pad like the one found in the Giro Xen for ease of cleaning.
This helmet suffers from freshman syndrome. It has a bunch of good features and a strikingly good design, but there are some details that were neglected in the rush to production. It is definitely bulky. Many finish items are poorly made or poorly assembled or installed. I’m confident that most of these issues will be ironed out in the next generation helmet. I have solved both the buckle and keeper issue by switching out to a buckle off of an old Giro Xen, and getting an appropriate $0.79 USD o-ring from City Mill. I give up on dealing with the suit mentality at Fox, so I’m done with the whole “warranty” question. I won’t miss getting an identical replacement questionable made in the PRC buckle – the replacement is far superior to the original. Considering this is a potential safety issue, I will drop my original review assessment a point.
Made in the PRC
Revised to “Recommended” from “Highly Recommended”
Revised to Three out of four techno monkeys
As I was messing with mine to fit it, I also noticed the pads. I thought to myself, what the heck is with all these little individual pads instead of one big one?
Yeah, fox is not the best for warranty. I had a jacket that I purchased off of speedgoat.com and it started to delaminate, so I read fox’s website and my interpretation was i could send it back to them, so I did and they sent it back to me, saying that they didn’t have any record of my buying from them. (Holy crap that’s a long sentence).
It looks like there are a lot of false Fox products going around. Or it is a P.R.C. thing, I don’t know, what I know is that the fasteners behind the ears in mine broke in the very first ride. Had to change to some old Bell ones that I have saved from my old influx helmet.
They look good from a distance, but have those crappy acessories (plastic parts). BTW I paid almost US$161 here in Brazil. Anyways, not what I expected… 🙁