Stopping jacket hood flapping about

Recently bought a singletrack II jacket to replace my very old and no longer waterproof altura night vision.

I’ve never been a fan of hoods, never felt the need for one, but the singletrack jacket was cheap and felt the right weight, not like the thin and lightweight 3L jackets about now.

First ride out today and the hood did get some use in the downpours, but when not in use it caught the wind and dragged the jacket up so that the zip was tight around my neck.

Anyone else found this? Does cinching it up as much as possible stop this? I ended up rolling it up and stuffing it down my back, which was less than ideal.

Ta

Tick.

I don’t have the answer but I’d love to hear the solution. I love having a couple of jackets with hoods that fit over the helmet but sometimes I’m wary of leaving the ground for fear or the wind causing a back flip.

Why not gather it up and pop it in a little fabric clip something like this:

Tarp clip from Bezos evil empire

it has the bonus of a little loop on the back so you can tether it and not loose it when the hood is deployed…

No need for a hood? Cut it it off. Solved.

Not with a hood but a windproof jkt I have had a flap inside the zip which regularly jammed it. Trimmed off with a pair of scissors. No more zip jamming.

I suppose hood surgery would be more visible and you may need to finish the edge of the fabric somehow.

Tuck the hood inside the jacket before putting it on?

Why not gather it up and pop it in a little fabric clip something like this:

I’ve got some of those somewhere…

seriously though, does everyone else just let it flap about?

I was planning on making a mod for my jacket to solve this. I haven’t got the full thing planned out as I need to source a donor jacket, but it’s a copy of a mod we used to do to our DPM windproof smocks. We used to sew an epaulette into the hood with a button on the outside, roll the hood up (towards the inside) and button down.

I’d probably go from the outside in as it would make waterproofing the stitches easier and utilise the hanging loop on the inside to velcro the strap around. Hood secured and will make a nice snug collar when zipped up.

Have they got rid of the ‘flap’ to secure the rolled up hood on the Singletrack II jacket?

It’s on the mk I jacket and works really well.

Are we taking mountain biking or some other sort of riding here?

I ride in a range of hooded jackets (Endura, Rapha, Fox etc.) on my MTB and have never once noticed or been bothered by my hood flapping about.

My roadie jackets don’t have hoods.

Tuck it inside your jacket.

Same as Drac

Tuck it inside the jacket. Seems so obvious I’m surprised nobody’s suggested it before.

But if you’ve already used the hood during a ride it’s going to be wet which will be unpleasant to say the least ?

But if you’ve already used the hood during a ride it’s going to be wet which will be unpleasant to say the least ?

From the OP:

I’ve never been a fan of hoods, never felt the need for one

Anyone else found this?

Hoods that don’t cinch down and storm collars – the zip pulls the jacket all the way over the bottom half of your face are the 2 worst things to ever happen to jackets made for cycling, If the hood’s not flapping about like a giant parachute the storm collar is flapping uselessly around your chin, and if you do it up to the top of the zip, you now have a piece of material in front of your mouth – that just gets increasingly soggier from your breathing. Wonderful. I think jacket ‘designers’ just look at what’s popular in the walking world and just copy it without actually thinking about it, I mean even bike brands can’t seem to provide somewhere for the hood to go when it’s not being used, so you do just end up shoving them uselessly down the back of the jacket which make it a pain it you need to use it. Oh, and the storm collar is the reason the hood’s got nowhere to go by the way, roll the hood up and cinch it down with velcro…now your jacket won’t zip up properly because the collar’s connected to the hood…which is why they don’t.

But not that I’ve overthought this, you understand…

I had to get a replacement jacket recently and I found precisely one that didn’t have a hood and storm collar.

It depends on the hood design, but sometimes you can cinch up the front opening cords so it takes the slack out of the hood when it’s not deployed. Most of the other DIY stuff is going to look a bit of a bodge. Stuff I’ve encountered includes zip-off hoods – you tend to lose the hood at some point – fold-down ones with flap or shock-cord and anchor point, hoods that roll away into collars, which are generally bulky and fiddly.

I’ver never seen it, but a while back, Berghaus did a top-end mountaineering jacket, which used small magnets to adapt the hood volume to work with or without a helmet. Worked well, but I’ve never seen it used anywhere else and Berghaus themselves seem to have forgotten about it, probably because it’s niche, fiddly to manufacture and adds cost.

You could do a similar thing using magnets to hold the hood down when not in use – a few on the neck-line, and matching ones on the brim. It would be a pain to DIY and I can’t see any of the bike clothing brands doing it, but it would work.

None of which is much help, but if you were designing from scratch, it would be an interesting solution with the bonus that you could simply hang your jacket from anything ferrous with minimal hassle and attach spare cleat bolts to your hood, which would be nice.

 but I’ve never seen it used anywhere else

I had a Acre/Mission Workshop rain jacket that had a row of poppers to attach a hood if you wanted it. But yeah, I don’t know why more manufacturers don’t offer it either, seems like a reasonable compromise

Poppers are a bit fiddly ime and detachable hoods go walkies ime, the nice thing with magnets is that the’dy pretty much just work, the hood’s there, but held down by the magnets and to deploy it, you’d  simply just pull the hood up. A bit like Fidlock buckles on helmet strap closures, which are brilliant ime.

Probably the core issue is that mountain bike clothing designers don’t really view the hood thing as an issue. I wonder how many of them actually ride. Quite often even technical clothing designers have a fashion background rather than being an end user themselves. Ideally you want both so you get a combination of good design informed by a firsthand appreciation of what the activity actual entails.

This thread is timely. I’ve never liked hoods in jackets, but now have two lovely Rab jackets – both with hoods. In a strong wind, they really can be very irritating, for exactly the reasons mentioned above. So I’m going to try the tucking the hood inside the jacket trick first.

You could try something with magnets, as mentioned above. I’ve got a Leatt waterproof onesie thing. The hood has a magnet in it and there’s one in the back of the suit so the hood sits flat against your back and doesn’t flap. They also give you a sticky back magnet that you can add to your lid so the hood then sticks to your helmet in the right place and doesn’t blow off backwards or slide forwards over your view.

Tuck it inside the jacket. Seems so obvious I’m surprised nobody’s suggested it before.

Great. Then you have a big gap between the apex of the hood and your neck fir all the water to piss down.

Hoods on cycling jackets are the spawn of satan for anything other than ridiculously cold ( and wet obvs) conditions.

They hardly ever had hoods on MTB jackets until some moron wondered what they could pointlessly change to convince punters they needed to rebuy. At which point it became almost impossible to buy a decent jacket any more.

A close fitting neck, perhaps with an elasticated or drawstring is infinitely better.

I recall some daft review in ST praising hoods, so at least we know who to blame…

Thanks for all of the replies so far.

Tucking it in did kind of work, but there’s no collar, and bunched up hood round your neck which, as said by others, makes pulling the storm zip tight when it’s a bit breezy to stop drafts a bit of a problem. Partly down to the storm zip being very high.

Removing the hood seems a bit much on a new jacket.

Before the altura I had an old Endura luminite which was great, winterish weight without insulation, vent zips and a proper collar with a zip off hood.

The altura was great too, generally commuter jackets seemed to work, but now they’ve all gone quite lightweight as materials have changed.

I’ll have a look for the strap on the hood, it may have it and I’ve just not spotted it.

My Gore bike jacket has an elasticated “rim” around the hood, so isn’t too voluminous in use. My Columbia Outdry jacket, not bike specific, has a roomy hood, but not once has it ever bothered me while riding.

Try just turning the hood inside out. I used to do that with a commuter jacket and it meant it just sat on my shoulders rather than acting like a parachute and tugging the zip round my neck. Comfort gainz and aero gainz.

I have a leaky altura night vision jacket and was waiting to replace it but no deals yet. Solution is a rapha trail jacket underneath, so double layered.  My altura jacket is seriously minging, being fluo, shows every bit of road dirt.

Looking at my altura purchases seems they only do summer sales.

Just tried it with the hood elastic cinched up enough not to strangle me and it’s flattened the hood down ok. Will try it out and see if that works.

Inside out may be a decent option for it too, providing the wind does t turn it right side in.

The main problem I had with the hood catching the wind a bit was that it pulled the jacket back so that the zip was at my throat.

I’ll try some of the above and see what works. 🙂

@thols2 the OP also said he’d used the hood on a ride .

I did. First time I’ve had an over the helmet hood.

That came out wrong.

@lovewookie I’m glad I’m not alone in finding hoods a pointless feature.I had a Madison jacket that had a flap you could roll the hood up in to , problem was rolled up it was bulky and kept snagging on the back of the helmet! Useless!

I’ve just bought a Gore Lupra jacket and was worried about the hood but after two rides I can’t really say I’m noticing it. Also when zipped right up it stops at your chin so isn’t in front of your mouth. Pretty pleased with it.