Hot weather gear

Southern7

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I have a Sliders. All season mesh jacket from Competition Accessories, compacc.com and it is the best I have found for a year round jacket. I have another mesh jacket, but the mesh was tighter. The Sliders had a bigger mesh pattern, so better air flow. It comes with two liners, a rain liner and a quilted winter liner, put both liners in when it is really cold. It has Kevlar on the shoulders and elbows as well as pads there and CE back pad. I wear a moisture management type short sleeve shirt under it that has a light silky feel, like under armor heat management. The jacket has very good air flow through the body section. As a plus I got it in hi-viz orange, which is great on an all black bike with a black helmet. I'm thinking my next helmet will be white to help with heat. I only wear full face helmets and I have a Fulmer with the built in tinted sun visor that slides down, it is like built in sun glasses. I wear sliders Kevlar jeans with the optional knee pads installed. I wear mesh type gloves and Icon ankle high boots, the shorter boots really make a difference over cowboy height boots in the heat. The Kevlar jeans are warm because of the Kevlar lining in certain areas, but not nearly as hot as road rash.
 

talonboy

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When I lived in Michigan, mesh gear seemed to work best for me. After moving to Las Vegas a few years ago, I found the mesh didn't work so well. As stated above, in high, dry heat, the outside air is hotter than your body temp, you need to shield yourself from that heat. I found that I was cooler sitting still, than I was riding. It was cooler behind a big windshield, than being exposed to airflow. The exact opposite of what I found in the high humidity riding back in Michigan. So wet a shirt, zip up the jacket, leave the cuffs open, and the back open a bit to get a little airflow thru the jacket, across the wet shirt, for a little cooling.
 

kmac

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kmac said:
Does anyone make a true cooling suit of any sort? And if not....why? We have engineers and geniuses here, lets go.

....HELP
Heard enough about underwear and wet T-shirt contest....
Back to the question....other than that hideous hotel window A/C unit strapped on the tail of the bike posted earlier, does anyone make some sort of cool suit? Electric or chemical/electro system?

Ideally a jacket/ pants liner like an electric heated liner is but twist a knob and it cools down.

Not a Freon pressure system with a pump and heat exchangers because that is too cumbersome...see pic earlier, but some sort of cooling electrode or chemical impregnated fabric that when hit with voltage cools....something. There has to be some system that can be adapted to this concept.
How did they cool the space suits back in the 60's when they were on the sunny side of the moon?
 

snakebitten

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Come on Kmac, TV was finally no longer black n white, but THAT space suit was far more cumbersome than that pillion seat AC system. :)

I think that thing is amazing! But $1500 seems too much in the middle of the winter. Might seem more affordable in August down here in the tropics.
 

kmac

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I am not saying a space suit, I am saying in the 1960s we sent man to the moon and dealt with the heat and freezing that came along with that, it is 2014 and is there NO tech can be used to make something thin and easy that cools?
 

snakebitten

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I get ya.
I find it amazing we invented all the technology it took to land on the moon and take off and come back to earth BEFORE we invented the weedeater!
 

lincolnrider

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Did not see this mentioned but did not read all carefully. A hydration pack filled with all the ice it can hold and then top off with water helps a lot. Even though it is insulated you can feel the cool on your back and then take a big drink every 15 minutes or so works really well. You will still ready to keep riding when your friends are pulling over for water, etc. When you eat lunch get a full cup of ice and refill.
 

tubebender

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Have a look here >>>> http://www.coolshirt.com/

They have some interesting products.
I'm more familiar with cool-suits in racing applications but the pump and cooler are to bulky for motorcycling.
 

kmac

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Carl,
That is exactly the type of tech I am asking about.
I was sure that the flowing of some chemical or gas would generate cold and could be used to create a cooling under layer.

It looks as though the CO2 just flows through the garment and off gasses at the other end harmlessly and the flow causes cooling like flowing propane does?

Are there other gasses or chemicals that could do the same?

Like wiping an alcohol swap on your skin feels cold there has got to be simple ways to make cool gear other than wicking and wet clothes.
Great find Tube
 

tubebender

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The simplest is to use air itself using the Vortex method. >>> http://www.newmantools.com/vortex.htm
We use similar products at work to cool cameras in high heat environments.
Unfortunately it needs to be compressed air, which would be hard to generate on a bike.

Using evaporation cooling like some of the ideas expressed by others is, for a motorcycle, probably the most efficient.

Other then that, nothing else comes to mind.
 

kmac

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Wow Carl that is cool.

That is the type of ideas I was looking for.
I have NO science back round so seeing different scientific tech is goal here.
It seems pretty simple, if it were planned, to have a small pump that runs off of the cam or even off of a chain or FD so it works only when the bike is moving, no biggie, maybe a screw drive or Whipple style pump with a simple air coupling QD that cycles cold air thru a vest....vent it up around the neck to cool your head....That Vortex generator is pretty small, it could even mount under the seat easily with a QD hanging...
The pump itself would not be hard, in your link the smallest VG only needs 2cfm at 100 PSI. That is not that hard to make and does not need a lot of HP...minimal power drain and weight addition for a 60* F drop in temp ( I realize that is the temp of the air coming out the end of the 1/8" NPT fitting) that could easily cool a good bit of your gear for a comfy long haul ride.

Seriously may sound like over kill or unnecessary but so did electric heated gear not so many years ago.
 

EricV

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You have some issues to over come to run a vortex generator on a bike, presumably to feed a cooling vest or clothing.

The vortex generator exhausts hot air as well as cool, so you need to dump that away from the rider and not melt anything else.

You need to provide high volume (2CFM or better), but still maintain high pressure. Most continuous duty cycle pumps that are compact enough for the application, even with a tank, can't give you that much volume at that pressure, and despite the continuous rating, are only going to run for an hour or so w/o overheating. The vortex generator is designed to be run on shop air, with a very large compressor and very large tank to absorb the duty cycle while providing the required volume. You have space for neither on the bike.

In regards to a whipple compressor, (twin screw compressor), similar issues present. When you compress air, you heat it. Driving hotter air into the vortex generator is counter productive at some point, not giving you enough cooling over ambient temps, which, btw, would likely be over 100F before you really needed the system to begin with. Typical automotive systems use intercoolers to cool the compressed air, but now you're adding another heat radiating device to the system too.

So, in a nut shell, you need an efficient compressor that can run continuously and provide high volume at high pressure. Not such an easy animal to find. Most compressors are oil cooled or oil/water cooled, in terms of automotive and generate good volume, but not high pressure. And make a lot of heat.

Then, there is the noise... Of the vortex generator, of the compressor, both dumping heat.

In regards to the cooling vest. It's $800 and has a one hour period of use before swapping canisters. C02 has a vapor pressure of 850 psi. (the pressure at which liquid goes to vapor) Nitrogen has a vapor pressure of 1400 psi, and it may be possible to run the vest on a smaller volume of nitrogen to achieve the same cooling properties, but nitrogen could present over cooling/icing and freeze burns as well, if things went wrong or too much flow was used. C02 has that potential, but not to as great a degree. In theory, the nitrogen tank of the same size, regulated at a lower flow rate, would cool as well, or better, and last longer. But probably only 40% longer, so another 24 minutes for the same size tank, possibly as much as 45 minutes, adjusting for the decreased volume of gas flow.

Short of super conducting magnetic bearings, (which would need liquid nitrogen cooling), this isn't something you're going to mount to the bike anytime soon.

You might do better reading up on the Venturi effect and Bernoulli's principle. It's been a while, but IIRC, if you mount a venturi tube in the airflow, it will generate a pretty good pressure of air that could be routed thru your vest, but I can't recall if the air flow is hot or cool. The venturi tube itself will get very hot. These are typically used on aircraft to power some instruments. My instincts are that the air flow will be quite hot, due to the compression of the air generating heat and the venturi tube itself will be hot from the friction of the air. Problem here, you'd need a large diameter device to compensate for the relatively low speed you would be traveling at, (compared to a jet), which may be prohibitive.

Bernoulli's principle
Venturi Effect
 

racer1735

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I have the same issue in West Texas. Very hot, very dry. Last summer I bought an Olympia Stealh one-piece suit. Its full mesh with CE approved armor in the right places (I've removed the knee pads and wear my motocross-style knee/shin guards in their place). Depending on how hot the ambient temp is, I can wear a long-sleeve t-shirt and jeans underneath (temps in mid 60s), a t-shirt and short (70s to upper 80s) or just a t-shirt and underwear (above 90). The tips for getting your underclothes wet does provide some relief, but the fact is, this mesh suit flows air and does a great job. I only notice the heat when stopped or when inside and not moving around. Simply walking provides enough breeze to make me feel cooler.
 
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