MotoDry Rallye 2 Adventure Suit
Crash tested!
Never let it be said, dear readers, that we don’t test things thoroughly here at McNews…
This is the second Motodry Jacket and Pant combo I’ve worn. The first was an Advent-Tour Trekker set that I covered over 100,000 kilometres in. Luckily, I still have that Trekker set as a backup, but let’s go through the Rallye 2 gear and how I’ve found it.
The Rallye 2 is the ‘next-to-top’ of the line from Motodry in Adventure terms, it’s made from 600D H/D Abrasion resistant material and comes with removable soft armour in the elbows, shoulders and back. You can check it out on the Motodry website for the full details.
The pants are just loose enough to go over Adventure and road boots, but I do tuck them into my motocross boots as the buckles on those are a bee’s dick too wide and I didnt want to rub through the pants.
They’re designed and constructed using a 3 layer system with a removable thermal inner, removable waterproof inner and a shower proof outer. I don’t mind the 3 layer system personally as it affords some flexibility and switching in or out layers only takes a few minutes, but I rarely need to use the thermal. Only on the coldest, frosty, sub zero Victorian mornings.
Most of the year I’ll run just the waterproof inner and a jumper or T-shirt depending on the temps. And then in summer, the waterproof layer comes out unless I’m absolutely sure it will rain. Those waterproof inners don’t breathe particularly well and I sweat like a bastard, as you might have seen in the CFMoto 450MT video…
I’ve found both the Advent-Tour and the Rallye 2 to be nicely made for that mid to high $300 price range. Surprisingly good value. Zips have been shown to be good quality and I’ve not had any fail (I only just replaced a metal fastener on the main zip of the Trekker jacket as I’d simply worn it out from use).
Between the two, I’d probably choose the Trekker, only because I prefer the slightly larger pockets, the back pocket, the integrated water bladder pocket and the slightly better airflow. If you weren’t wanting to be using a bladder in your jacket, or weren’t going to be riding hard in hot conditions, the more streamlined style of the Rallye 2 option would probably be the go.
Ultimately I can vouch for their build quality and can recommend them at that price point. I wouldn’t have kept wearing them if I didn’t rate them.
So… the crash test. How did it happen and at what sort of speed?
Well, I cleaned up a Kangaroo. An adult grey. At around 70 km/h. Me, not the roo, though it was fairly hammering too. It was at night, about a kilometre from home on a gravel road. Scattered trees and scrub either side of the road from whence it emerged at full flight in a daring but ultimately fatal assault on my front wheel.
It landed on the road about three metres in front of me at full speed and I’m not sure if I actually had enough time to even get the front brake fully squeezed or not. It happened very quickly. Either way, it took out my front wheel and we went down hard onto relatively new blue metal gravel with a compacted base. I took a decent slide mostly on my right front and right hand side, hence the marks and tears where they are in the pics.
I suspect in hindsight that I actually broke a bone in my left hand from the force of the bar coming back into me as the Roo collected the front wheel and rotated it hard left (my hand took a good while to mend up) – and I banged up my right shoulder pretty good as it took the bulk of the impact on the road. A couple of months later and I’m pretty much back to full fitness.
How did the gear hold up? Pretty well considering that surface was really quite abrasive. Possibly more abrasive than an average worn in tarmac road would have been. The front pocket that I had my phone in did wear through at the spot where the corner of the phone must have been. But luckily for me it didn’t damage my phone at all. And the right forearm which took the biggest brunt of the fall also wore through, as did the right knee. My knees were nicely protected by the soft armour and barely had a scratch on them, but my right forearm did cop a bit of gravel rash.
There’s a bit to unpack regarding the gravel rash on my arm however. I normally run a jacket size large enough to give me the option of running hard armour underneath it when I’m going offroad properly. In this case the jacket was a 2XL when I’d normally fit a large. And I was wearing enduro style gloves that weren’t the ‘over the sleeve’ type I’d have normally worn on the road.
The combo of under the sleeve glove and a loose fitting sleeve meant that the sleeve rode up my arm a little and exposed my skin to the road. That’s where the gravel rash is from, so it’s no fault of the jacket. I’m giving you the extra detail here so you can take that into account if you do the same, gain the knowledge without having to bear the pain. It probably would have been avoided had I been wearing over the sleeve gloves and a snugger fitting jacket.
Surprisingly my Five GT3 offroad gloves I was wearing held up with just some minor scuffing, as did my Kreiga R22 backpack. So they’re still definitely usable without repair. The Rallye 2 jacket and pants would need some patches stitched over the tears and would probably be good to go for round two, but they might look a bit scrappy in photos so I’ll get them replaced.
Would I wear the Rallye 2 gear again? Absolutely. It did its job.
I’ve decided not to go for a ‘larger than necessary’ size jacket to fit hard armour under going forward. Soft armour is pretty good these days and if I really intend on laying the ears back I can run the hard armour under an MX jersey… or the Trekker jacket, but I’m going to try and avoid doing that again if I can…
Either way, any crash you walk away from is a good one. Even if you do need to sit on the road for a bit in the dark to settle the adrenaline back down…
