so to better help fit...I would be in "ride" position to evaluate. Is the airbag assembly in the suit when you snapped the pics?
you're right, and thank you! No, currently the Airbag is not in the suit. That is coming soon though. From my dancing around the house it seems most of the loose sections did stretch to fit, and I think the airbag will take up more space than my current back protector.
I will say that prior to ordering their measuring kit, I looked around a lot and no one seems to be talking about them - mostly because of price point. It is really odd to see them as (the only?) shop allowed to integrate the A* system, pro riders on grids, and no one has any opinion on the products. So I appreciate the conversation around these even if it means I need to get my order in now for the 2020 season.
Their site says $1880 for custom suit and $1,200 for full airbag system included - so about $3,100 for cow leather and tech air before taxes & shipping. There are also plenty of options and opportunities to make it probably close to a $5k suit if you wanted to.
So $3100 then if the airbag deploys how much to get reset, charged etc? And how long would that take?
This story is not unique. Customer service in the motorcycle disciplines is spotty at best to begin with. Doesn't really matter what it is. It's super hard to find people who can simply execute without making mistakes, pushing back timelines, or inflating costs. Unless you go straight to the Cadillac options for what you need, and most of us don't have those kind of resources. Even if we did, you still find out that this sort of stuff is pretty common. Stickboy is about the only real exception I can think of. I know I can't get away with that in my line of work and stay employed. Not sure why it's so different for anything motorcycle-related. I had a custom suit made from another company. Nice people, they meant well, but there were.... hiccups, let's say. I expected that because all this stuff is outsourced to some overseas shithole to laborers making $0.15 an hour. But it's still frustrating because the stuff isn't cheap. It got resolved, but it took a lot - a LOT - of coordination and haggling. It also took a fairly long time. At that point I was just happy to be done with the process and move on. If anything I guess it's good to know it happens across the price spectrum.
Chino, I believe RS-Taichi can also integrate the Tech-Air, but they are the only two brands to my knowledge. When I was researching Mithos I found very little first hand reviews of their suits, but being one of the few brands allowed to integrate the airbag and having riders in Moto-2 / 3 was enough for me to feel comfortable that I wasn't working with a fly by night company.
I don't know about Mithos but I am using Andy at ACT Racing for a new air suit from Vircos. Andy met me for measuring and used all the Vircos diagrams to make sure everything was correct. They (Vircos) also required pics as well with each measurement. Communication has been excellent.
ACT is the best suit I have ever worn. Never heard of Vircos. What's the deal with that, and how does ACT tie into it? I have the A-Stars Airbag and would love to put it in an ACT (or equivalent) suit.
In So. California you see Mithos suits often. All the Trackdaz staff wear them so they are not all that out of the ordinary out here. I met the owner of Mithos at COTA and saw the rep set up in the pits at Laguna last weekend supporting riders so again, to me, they seem very visible. I don't wear their suits so cant comment on them, but you could probably find a lot of first hand reviews on Southern California based racing/track day forums. I looked once and found plenty of Mithos centers around me to get measured, one just 10 min. away from my house. Two things that come to mind about custom suits. 1 They will always take a pretty good amount of time to get. That's the nature of low volume custom anything. 2. Never sell your current suit before you have a replacement. If you ride on the track often, you should probably keep a spare suit anyway.
I was told that the suits are made in the AStars facility. Nick McFadden and Gauge Rees wear them on our team, and they seem to be very good. Mithos had a lot of staff at Laguna, they seem to have a good deal of investment in the company.
Andy at ACT Racing has partnered with Vircos suits out of Italy to sell their GP12 Tech Air suits. You can create the design/colors right on their website (Vircos) and send to Andy. In a matter of two days my design was completed with all the patches etc. sent to Vircos. Should have the suit by mid August.
Lemme just say this given my current exploits... 10 months for forks. This was like pulling teeth. 1 year for airbox/mounts/exhaust, but awesome communication. 1 year for fairings, although super good communication as well and a great dude. 18+ months for a single cylinder motor and still counting. This one sours me most. Jollymoto never returned a single email. Can't seem to get Mark Dent to return an email even though I've talked to him before and bought stuff. Lemme tell you who's amazing and has never let me down... TJ. 100%. Vinco Racing dudes have great service for switches. Harris Performance had amazing communication and turn around. Charles "cf" on here is awesome to deal with. Piero who sells all the Vdue stuff is awesome. Borut at Zeeltronic is super awesome. Jozef at Attack is a solid dude. This is my last outstanding thing of note, seems on top of things real well. Braketech done aiit by me. Tyga rips. PerformancefabUK is solid. Ti-bolts are good. Even just online... BRC and Wicked Motorsports seem to really like communicating with comments and people and having a presence online. I haven't done business yet, but they make me want to. So batting like 50/50 on 2 projects over the past year or so currently. I have low hopes for good businessmen in motorsports frankly after the last 20 years... so the good ones are always like a pleasant surprise and I love to sing their praises and go back to them again. A lot of people with talent or awesome ideas that frankly should have an actual business partner handle the service and organization of things because they're awful at it. They're doing themselves a disservice. It sucks to see, but when I'm paying big bucks I lose empathy for people's shortcomings. I'd also be fired if I pulled half this shit sometimes. Such is life I guess.
This thread has me wondering if I should ditch the idea of a Mithos and get a D Air since I have the D Store right in my back yard. Waiting a whole year is ridiculous. I'm currently on my 2nd Pilot leather suit. I drove an hour to his shop got measured and had both suits within a month on both occasions so no excuses.
I wouldn't blame you. I would like to add that I've had some communication with Mithos since posting this, and they were extremely professional in their response to this. From the sounds of it their US operations have grown exponentially and they weren't prepared to handle the orders. They ensured me that they were investing in new hardware and technology to speed up this process. No excuses of course, but in the future I have hopes that this isn't what they think is normal. Also the final product is amazing so there's also that.
