og City vs. ProGrip Visor Inserts
The ProGrip visor insert is made by Plastiche Cassano S.r.l. in Italy and is new to the U.S.A. It may be hard to find, but has been available in the U.K. for some time. Fog City visors have been available for several years and are distributed by Modern World Ventures in California. There is no country of manufacture listed anywhere on the Fog City packaging, so we're not sure where the product is made. Isn't there supposed to be a law regarding country of origin for manufactured products?
Each of these visor inserts are applied on the inside of the helmet visor. This may seem intuitive, but I'll bet more than one hapless motorcyclist has made the mistake of installing the insert on the outside of the visor. The directions for both products aren't entirely clear on this point; so we figured we'd address the issue just for the record.
Each insert has a gasket around its outer edge, and the gasket includes an adhesive coating with a protective vinyl cover over the adhesive that must be removed prior to installation. Each visor insert also has a thin film that acts as a protective coating over the lens and which also must be removed prior to installation.
The ProGrip visor insert is larger in the top-to-bottom (height) dimension than the Fog City visor. The ProGrip measures 4" (102 mm) in height compared to the Fog City's 3-5/8" (approx. 92 mm). This makes a big difference, as we found. There just wasn't enough room in several of the helmets we tried for the ProGrip insert to fit on the inside of the visor without interfering with the visor's ability to close and seal correctly.
The lesson here is that it's important to check the dimensions of the inside of the visor, between the top and bottom of the visor opening, to ensure that the ProGrip (or any visor insert, for that matter) will fit before committing to a purchase. Unfortunately, the dimensions of the inserts are not readily available, which is strange, considering that this can be a make-or-break decision.
Installation
The helmet visor must be clean before the insert can be installed. Each manufacturer suggests a particular cleaning method to ensure the best adhesion, so our best advice is to follow the instructions. Don't forget that any fingerprints or dirt may end up trapped between the visor and the insert if the visor is not perfectly clean prior to installation.
Before the insert can be installed, the correct location on the visor must be ascertained to ensure that the insert will fit correctly on the inside of the visor without interfering with the visor seal. Once the correct location is found, the outline of the insert is marked on the outside of the visor for use as a guide when the insert is applied to the inside of the visor itself. To install the insert, the visor must be removed from the helmet. The guide lines are used to line up the insert and the insert is installed by pressing the adhesive backing to the visor.
The ProGrip instructions call for masking tape to be applied to the outside of the visor and used as a guide. It wasn't clear to us whether the tape should be applied so that the edges of the tape act as the guide or if the tape should be applied so that guide lines could be drawn on the tape with a pen.
In any case, we didn't have any masking tape on hand, so we used a semi-permanent felt-tipped pen to mark the outside of the visor. The ProGrip insert has a tan-colored protective backing that we peeled off to use as a template (photo left, below).
| Marking the outside of the visor, using the paper backing from the ProGrip visor insert. | The Fog City insert comes with a template that is used to indicate the best position for installation. |
| Fitting the ProGrip insert to the inside of the helmet visor. | Peeling the clear protective backing from the insert. |
