Motorcycle Helmet Lock: Why You Need One
After the bike itself, your helmet is likely the most expensive piece of gear you own. Lock it up and keep it safe while you’re away from your motorcycle.
We’re big proponents of rider safety and helmet usage here on HDForums, but we’re aware that there are some sacrifices to be made. For one, full leathers on a hot day can leave you feeling like a cooked sausage after a day of riding, especially on air-cooled bikes like Harleys. Another issue is what to do with your helmet when you stop somewhere.
If you’re a touring bike buy, you might be lucky enough to be able to stow it inside of one of your hard cases. For the rest of us, we’re resigned to carrying our helmet with us like a small, inconveniently-shaped pet, lest our several hundred dollar investment in personal safety grows legs and walks off while we’re enjoying a burger and fries.
While some of the other guys have been nice enough to provide helmet locks as standard equipment on their motorcycles, Harley-Davidson has neglected to do so. It’s a minor oversight on an otherwise great bike, and a major inconvenience for us safety-conscious riders.
Thankfully, aftermarket helmet locks exist, but at various levels off effectiveness, attractiveness, and quality. Some require making permanent modifications to your bike and stick out like a sore thumb, while others look as though a child could defeat it and walk off with your helmet.
However, this one appears to be the hot setup. We won’t know for sure until we get our hands on one for testing, but to say that we’re intrigued is an understatement.
The lock itself, marketed by the appropriately named Helmet Lock, LLC, sells for around $60 and utilizes a pretty standard setup — a steel cable that loops through the helmet and back into itself, locking in place in a small housing.
We like this setup for a lot of reasons. For one, it’s versatile. Depending on cable length, you can lock up multiple helmets, whether it’s a passenger, riding buddy, or both. You could also use the cable to attach the bike to a pole or other handy immovable object, and even loop the cable through the helmet on its way back to the housing, protecting both in one shot.
Helmet Lock offers several different optional cable lengths, from 18 inches all the way up to 12 feet (the standard cable is one foot). With the cables retailing for around ten bucks each, it’s worth picking up a couple for some trial and error to find the just-right length. Alternatively, you could measure the old-fashioned way, using a length of string, a marker, and a tape measure to mock things up before clicking the order button.
Another thing we like about steel cable is that, unlike solid helmet locks, it can’t be easily bent or pulled apart. The would-be thief would have to cut through a substantial diameter of coated steel wire to have even a hope of defeating a lock, which would require a pretty serious set of bolt cutters — not exactly something you can just carry around or easily conceal.
As far as installation, it looks to be pretty simple and straightforward. Any bolt on your bike that you can insert a washer into becomes a potential attachment point for the helmet lock. We’re hoping it’s as easy as it sounds, because we’d like to stop carrying our helmet around like a teacup poodle and leave it with the bike where it belongs. Stay tuned for a full review soon!
H-D Forums members can receive 40% off all Helmet Lock products for a limited time. Use coupon code HLK6 on HelmetLockLLC.com
