How long it last ?

Ride was four hours and not very sweaty. Didn’t even have to squeeze the pads out, they felt dry. From the itching, I think it went around the 2hr mark.

It only arrived yesterday morning.

That really is crap 🙁

Mine went back to Wiggle Friday night and after posting about it on their FB page I secured a refund. Shame as its a great helmet, disintegrating pads aside…

It’s becoming a game now. I’m riding saturday and sunday next weekend. I’m wondering if I should order two. I’ll never suffer an old sweaty helmet ever again at this rate. It’s great, use, return it, replace it, repeat.

But yes, great helmet. And I’ve never had this problem with x-static pads before.

I’m going to keep using my older Xar for a few months in the hope that Giro change the pad glue…. Then I’ll buy another one !

The pads seem fine on mine. However, my 4 month old orange Montaro has faded really badly. I’d noticed that it had faded but seeing another rider’s newer one at the weekend demonstrated just how much less intense its colour is now. Has anyone else had this happen? It seems excessive for the age of the helmet.

Even my replacement pads have done the same thing after a few hours.

Going to get Mrs Dubleyou to see what she can do with the sewing machine.

Wonder if the new, cheaper, helmet will be better?

Chris
My orange montaro did exactly the same thing. To the point it was nearly white in places. I contacted wiggle and returned it and got a full refund . Mine was 6 months old at the time.

I remember reading in one of the magazine test reviews that their orange one faded, but assumed they had sorted before production. Between that and the pads it seems a bit of a flawed piece 🙁 Real pity as it fitted me great and I liked the design .

legend – that Chronicle one looks decent, think I’ll wait for a few reviews before buying it though, given issues with Montaro…

Yeah not actually sure when the Chonicle is out either. Given the pricing, *€100 or €120 for the MIPs version, at least it’ll feel like less of a risk

*whatever that turns into in £

^^^ The Chronicle is available at Tredz at £99, however Wiggle sell the Montaro at under £85, albeit seem to be running out of common sizes….

jimr80 – Member
Chris
My orange montaro did exactly the same thing. To the point it was nearly white in places. I contacted wiggle and returned it and got a full refund . Mine was 6 months old at the time.

Thanks for the info. I found an nsmb.com article that said that the first batch of orange Montaros had this problem and Giro were replacing them. I’ve emailed the importers to confirm this.

Mine may have not looked so bad had the visor fade to match . However it was as bright as the day I purchased it.

My visor is still pretty bright as is the bit underneath it. The fading elsewhere isn’t uniform, which makes it more obvious.

I replaced mine with the Lime version as i really like this helmet. 3 rides in and the pads have start to come apart, Grrrrr.
Off to contact wiggle.

This policy of replacing the whole helmet at wiggle really doesn’t help matters. Perfectly good helmets are going in the bin for no reason other than someone has sweated in them. All it needs is a new set of pads but that is beyond wiggle’s warranty model. That’s why I’ve now ended up with the wrong colour after having to send my first one back.

Auto denied there was an issue, however giro Europe will openly admit there was an issue with the first batch. Respect to them for that.

I really hate companies that say “we’ve never seen this happen before”. Really? It’s the third one I’ve sent back so I know you’ve seen at least 3.

3 rides was good going. I’m not getting past 3 hours with mine.

I had 4 go back because of pads and the visor being fixed at a funny angle.

Shame because the concept is good and the fit and styling are nice.

I have found lately that Giro products ‘just aren’t what they used to be’ in terms of quality. Hence I have gone for Kask on the road and Sweet Protection off road. The Bushwacker is a great helmet if you have a ‘Giro shaped head’ and the quality is streets ahead of Giro. I went from a Trabec and the fit is better for me and it comes down lower over the temples which is reassuring and feels robust but well vented.

A real shame as Giro used to be my default choice and I can’t bring myself to buy anything from Specialized.

Had a thought whilst riding earlier. What size are the pads that are failing?

Mine are the blue-green ones in large and nearly 6months use with no problem now.

My three were mediums. I did wonder if it was colour but it’s not that.

That’s another set of pads away. Grr. Large size.

With the previous orange helmet the pads last at least 5 months. So i was surprised to see them fall apart so quickly.
Wiggle has said they will refund the new helmet! not what i really want.

My recent helmet purchase was an orange medium one. The pads lasted 2 hrs. Wiggle wouldn’t replace the pads so refunded me for the helmet. They must have a large cupboard full of them now !

My orange medium one is a month and maybe 20 hours use old and is fine still.

Wrong type of sweat maybe?

any update on these ? Wonder if Giro are changing pad construction ?

Medium Lime, had since 11/15 and pads are fine.

^^^^ wonder if the Wiggle ones were old stock or something, as most of the ones with dodgy pads appear to have come from them ???

Well, wiggle have them back in stock now so let’s hope the one I ordered last week is from new stock and will no longer fall apart on the first use.

Maybe I need to go out riding to test it now.

got some new pads – the latest ones….

and exactly the same, starting to fall apart after two rides 😆

the glue isn’t strong enough, once it gets sweaty and stores up the sweat throughout a ride, its like it evaporates the glue holding it together and then it just starts to fall apart

admiteddly my last one fell apart and got no worse really, and I got 6 months use from it so not too bad, but the new style pads are identical so its no different at all

Photos of what a falling apart pad looks like? Maybe I’m not so fussy?

i bought a Montaro helmet from CRC at very end of december 2016. the pads failed on the first ride, so sent it all back, CRC sorted me out with new pads…different colour, but same again within 1 ride, CRC sent me out another set of new pads direct from Giro europe after speaking with them, they lasted 1 ride… each ride was 2-4 hrs long, padding checked after 1 hour and were falling apart even then. the problem is obvious to me. the hydro-phyllic padding swells so much it bursts the seams once it reaches saturation point. total joke product!!!! am sending my helmet back now to get a completely different brand as it looks like all Giro helmets will be supplied with rubbish hydro-phyllic padding

i did my own test with the brand new pads recieved yesterday. i put them in a bowl of water to see if my hypothesis of bursting seams upon saturation held true and indeed they did start to burst. what i did notice that the problem exacerbated ten fold when i squeezed the water out of the pads…….. mimicking that thing we all do when about to hit a descent after a hard climb and you push the helmet into your head to get rid of excess water so it doesn’t drip into your eyes when you start descending. the helmet itself was great just let down by zero R+D on the pad system. it strikes me that that the bike industry uses us to test their products, that way they get paid to do proper R+D and we suffer for it. i can reel of scores of products over the years that i have had fail on me within a month of use.

what really boils my p i ss, is that enduro mag voted it “best helmet on test”. the reviwer quite obviously never rode the helmet for much more than 20 mins if that…. and plainly didn’t work hard enough to sweat into it. coz if had he would have picked this up straight off the bat. magazine, digital or otherwise, reviews are a crock of shi t.

this is the original set after 1 ride

Posted by Michael Clyne on Tuesday, February 7, 2017

this is the 2 replacement sets each after 1 ride

Posted by Michael Clyne on Tuesday, February 7, 2017

i’ll take some photos of mine tonight. ~1000+ miles and 100+ hours and still they seem fine.

and I can sweat with the best of them.

I’ve had several of these now and they’ve all gone the same way. Tried the “new and improved” pads from giro. They went the same way although they did last to the second ride.

Love the lid, hate the pads. Wish there was an answer.

same as Onzadog, helmets returned initially to Wiggle and last week to Evans, with 4 sets of goosed pads, all as above.

Loving my new POC Tectal now though 🙂

Had mine a while now, first set of pads gave up really quicly, the replacement set still going strong. i replaced the sweet p bushwacker with the montaro because of sweat pissing in my eyes. the problem has gone away.

Does anyone have a 2017 helmet and have the pads done the same thing?

^^^^ when I contacted Giro they said pads had been changed and sent me 2 sets of new ones. They fell apart the same way. If you buy a 2017 helmet today, the date of manufacture will like be around Feb to June 16, so who knows what pads you’ll get in it. Giro couldn’t tell me what date of Montaro helmet manufacture would guarantee the new pads which I found hard to believe…

Seeing as the new ones they sent me fell apart I gave up on them as a brand.

Been using mine since August last year, my pads are fine and I sweat bucket loads. Admittedly I haven’t removed them or cleaned them but they don’t smell so no need. Just dry the helmet out at room temp.

so I took some photos of my sweaty helmet…

now I’ve looked closely there are some sign of delamination at the outer edges but not anything I’d noticed before I looked closely.