… a Hanna Pro from the mid eighties. I had the previous model with no vents at the rear.

Helmet design was pretty useless back then. Shortly afterwards Brancale (Barnacle) brought out an all polystyrene lightweight shell that broke if you looked at it.

What was your first lid? Post up a pic.

Leffeboy & Phil

Italspark with a Barnacle

No pictures… but my first was a Vetta (?) Corsa Lite with a yellow & black lycra cover.

Oh, the excitement when I saved up and finally bought a Specialized ‘Stars and Stripes’ Airforce 2. 😀

Vetta (?) Corsa Lite

Yay ! I had one of them, though my 1st was one of the leather strip sort 😳 .

Italspark still has those breeks! 🙂

chin wagging with Eric from Surly here last year…

FORTH FAT Gathering 132 by coastkid71, on Flickr

I have a new unused Bell in the box somewhere my Dad bought from Edinburgh Bicycle Co-operative when he bought a bike ther around the mid 80s 🙂

Coastkid – this is Italspark on his second ride with us. His bars were twice the width on his first ride. His line choices are still as sketchy thirty years later.

🙂

That

Then one of these in red

Just had a look for pics of my first mtb helmet that my mum made me buy back in 1993 but i can only find pics of my bike at the time, nae pics at all of me – i was the only one of my friends who rode so nobody to take pics. My 1st helmet was a Bell Image and i had it air brushed exactly like John Tomac’s famous American Eagle design, I used to get my moto-x helmets painted by Piers Dowell and i sent him my Bell Image and asked him to copy it, from what i can remember it was the mutz-nutz and identical to Tomacs. From distant memory i sold it in the late 90’s. I dunno if Piers is still about but he used to do pretty much everyones Moto-X helmets and stuff back then.

Nae helmet pic so “thread hijack” here’s my bike from 1993,

Still got the frame and seat post, still riding it 80,000 miles & 21 years later set up as an SS roadie bike

One like this with a dayglo green wasp stopper

then I upgraded with an Etto so that I could ride like Tinker Juarez 🙂

I too had an Etto only in green. I then artistically added “Mint Sauce” stickers to it that had come free from mbuk magazine.

When I started riding off road (1990ish) I never wore a helmet. I got away with riding Moab etc, a cycle touring trip in NZ all helmetless. When I did my first race (S.A.M.S) though I needed one, which I found dumped over an ex girlfiends back garden fence lying on railway land, it was an uncovered lump of white polystyrene with straps to keep it on. I finally brought a proper one for riding when I moved to the lakes which was a white £25 Specialized one. Now got a S-Works and have used their crash replacement many times (for non crash damaged helmets).

Only just threw out the Bell helmet I got with my first Sumpjumper, so 1988? Mind you I had a Rokhopper before that – can’t recall what helmet I had but I *think* I had one, so that would have been 1986..

No easily available pics I’m afraid. Like yours mcmoon.. 🙂

I had a Bell – no idea what it was called, circa 1985/6. It was bulbous and white with minimal venting. The slaes point was that the little badge at the front lifted up to give you extra ventilation when it was really hot. The aperture was about 3/4 inch square. Made a massive difference to the cooling….not.

The slaes point was that the little badge at the front lifted up to give you extra ventilation when it was really hot. The aperture was about 3/4 inch square. Made a massive difference to the cooling….not.

I had one too.

fasthaggis, I had one of (in red as well)!

Been riding bikes since I was four, 38 years now, this is my first ever helmet.

mcmooter do you still work as a jongleur?

Brancale here – like this one but it was black

I think I bought it after having an off after the ’87 storms. Came round a corner to find (another) tree down, slide and rolled neatly off the bike. I was feeling very smug until I rolled head first into a (standing) tree 😉

Bell Image replaced that.. so I could be Tomac

I couldn’t find a pic online, but I think this was my first.
(cropped out the rest to avoid 80s lycra fashion police arrest)

Edit: later replaced the mesh cover with a yellow/black/white one.

How I rolled…

I had one of these:

At the time it was acceptable to wear such a thing….

How did this people not die instantly without 6 inches of travel front and rear? 😀

me in the late eighties (best guess sporting a Centurion polystrene helmet with mesh cover and goretex socks no less. Proper mountain biking!

V1-pro, no digitized pics, you might have some MC!

I wish I’d had it on at the food fight at the Coylumbrige for the Grundig in what, 89?

this, but in black; (spesh extra air)

then, sub 6:

I loved my sub6!
Then my king cobra, but haven’t really loved any helmets since

Pink Etto FTW!

V1-pro, no digitized pics, you might have some MC!

Here you go Al.

No pics but I had a Cosmic Trail helmet, horrid thing. Pre retention systems also, so it bounced around when descending rocky ground. Fun, fun 😆

My first bike helmet was a Bell Image, an early microshell. It broke way too easily, so I bought the V1 Pro in ’92 or ’93. The Ritchey Tomahawk is from ’97 which I bought a few years ago on ebay.

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first helmet a really cool small black and white boeri full facer from the mid eighties for bmx racing. First mtb helmet a bell ukon. Really good helmet with one downside – it made me look like an egg head. Amazingly i have just discovered you can still get them for £16 ish which is pretty good really if you don’t mind the side on profile.

First hardshell was a Bell Tomac ‘Image’? about 1985

I had a Green Skid Lid

Oldgit – I had one of those. I white one (Stewart was the make from memory).

I upgraded to a specialised sub 6 some years later.

My wife would not let me have a real TT head faring so I bought a Bell Vortex (which was semi aero but had some protection). I still have it in the box (I used to treat it like a baby!).

Like this:

I had one of the Giro, as in fasthaggis photo, purely so i could enter triathlons. The day the helmet arrived i went for a road ride, without helmet (as it was just for racing) and promptly got wiped out by a car pulling out into me. There was a cop car parked up and he said i thought you weren’t going to get up from that!!
Have worn a helmet everyday since then.

Bell Image circa 1991 with obligatory dayglo MBUK stickers.
I still have it for some reason.