SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — When Bell Helmets launched the world’s first full-face motorsports helmet—the Star in 1966—the company was one of only a handful of helmet manufacturers in the world. The brand was so well-regarded, the words “Bell” and “helmet” were used synonymously and interchangeably. That Bell would introduce a quantum technological leap forward like the full-face had come to be expected. After all, the company’s founder
invented the motorsports helmet in 1954, significantly upgraded the design with the addition of expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam a couple years later and quickly earned the admiration and support of the world’s top motorsport racers and enthusiasts. Back then you either wore a Bell or you wore nothing.
The original Bell Star was the world's first full face motorsport helmet. It was put to the test here at Evel Knievel's legendary jump over the Caesar's Palace fountain in Las Vegas.A Star is (re)born
Fast-forward 40-odd years to 2008 and Bell is again launching a helmet called Star, but the environment, the helmet and the company are very different. The market is cluttered with
dozens of brands, the competition is stiffer, advances are more subtle, and differences between helmets, price points and technologies are hard for riders to distinguish. So what’s different about the Star?
“The Star is the perfect balance of what riders are looking for in a helmet—ventilation, stability, ease-of-use and comfort,” explains Vice President of Bell Powersports Tom Larter. “It’s emblematic of what Bell can do and will do as a company.”
Adding resources to equal the passionOver the years Bell has undergone a series of splits, mergers and acquisitions—some beneficial, others detrimental—according to Larter, but now under the $600 million Easton-Bell Sports umbrella, he sees the company at it’s most powerful yet, functioning with the resources of a large corporation while still developing products with the passion of its born-in-a-garage past.
“As part of Easton-Bell Sports we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the best in research, design, engineering, testing and manufacturing resources certainly for helmets, but also sporting goods in general,” he said. “At the same time, we function day-to-day like Bell did back in the day. Our designers can have an idea, go into our shop here in Santa Cruz and knock out a prototype in short order. There’s no shortage of creativity, passion nor the tools to actualize those visions.”
By tapping all three of Bell’s main helmet units—auto racing, motorcycle and bicycle—as well as the parent company’s other divisions, which include Easton, a specialist in composite and aluminum equipment for hockey, baseball and bicycling; and Giro, a design-intensive producer of bicycling and snow sport helmets and eyewear, Bell was able to assign specific projects to expert teams in every area of the Star’s development, according to Larter.
“In the Star, we wanted a helmet that was more stable than anything else out there, so we went to our auto racing guys who design open-cockpit F1 and IndyCar helmets,” he said, “We wanted a helmet that had incredible air circulation, so we tapped the designers who do our super-ventilated Tour de France bicycle helmets and Moto-8 Supercross helmet. We wanted the best shield mechanism with the fastest shield swaps so we assigned a team that specializes in the small parts and mechanisms found on our snow helmets to focus on that.”
Putting all the pieces together: Greater than the sum of the parts
The challenge of harnessing all the function-specific engineering into a cohesive whole, both aesthetically and practically, fell to Product Manager Chris Sackett who oversaw the Star’s development from concept to delivery.
“The risk you run in doing a helmet this way is ending up with Mr. Potato Helmet,” he said with a chuckle. “But our industrial designers stepped up and were able to blend these engineering elements into something pleasing to the eye as well. It’s form-follows-function to be sure, but it’s also beautiful to look at.”
Testing: Break ‘em to make ‘em
Then there’s safety testing. Most companies have their helmets tested during a pilot production stage when their design is complete to verify that, theoretically, the production helmets will meet safety standards, according to Sackett. Bell does that too, but also tests its helmets several times during a helmet’s development cycle to figure out how to integrate design advances without compromising protection.
“We use our in-house test lab as an integral part of our design process, not just as post-design verification,” said Sackett. “On the Star we were hitting the helmet as we were developing the Velocity Flow Ventilation system, making sure that we simultaneously created a system that pulled air through the helmet and passed testing. Without an in-house test lab right across the hall from R&D, that would be impossible.”
Velocity Flow Ventilation is the choice of the coolest riders
One of the primary goals for Bell designers was to create the most ventilated full-face street helmet ever made. And while Bell had great success developing the super airy Velocity Flow Ventilation (VFV) system for its Moto-8 motocross helmet, an open face MX helmet without a face shield is considerably easier to get air into than a helmet with a full face shield. And though some helmets look like they have large vents, if you take off the plastic covers and mechanisms, you’ll see that the holes they funnel into are only about a quarter-inch in diameter—they have to be in order to pass penetration testing. Given those restraints, how do you improve ventilation?
“We actually sat down with the guys who designed our bicycle helmets,” explained Sackett. “Even though they have the advantage of these massive vent openings on their helmets, they feel that the channeling of the air is just as important. So they were able to give us a lot of input as far as how and where to route the airflow. That in combination with the flow engine VFV creates awesome ventilation.”
At the heart of the VFV is a flow dynamic that harnesses the high-velocity airflow over the helmet to power the system. By placing an airflow separation ridge in a specific location on the top of the helmet, just above low pressure exhaust ports, Bell engineers created a natural flow engine that draws air through the entire helmet. It’s a dynamic Bell optimized in wind and water tunnel testing.
Bell's Velocity Flow Ventilation diagram. Illustration:Top Dog Illustration
“We used wind tunnel and water tunnel testing to help us adapt the VFV for street and track use,” Sackett explained. “Using these research techniques and flow dynamics data, we were able to visualize and determine optimal placement to activate the ventilation. Then we added adjustable venting so riders can regulate how much air is flowing through the helmet.”
Bell engineers used the University of Washington water tunnel to visuallly confirm the airlow patterns of the Star's Velocity Flow Ventilation system.
A series of intake vents—two on the top of the helmet, four brow ports and the two-port chin vent, make up what Bell calls FlowAdjust, a highly adjustable system that allows riders to dial in the desired amount of airflow. On a hot day a rider can open all the ports for maximum ventilation. Alternately a rider can close some or all of the vents or add the included chin curtain to adjust for cooler temperatures.
“In our field tests with riders and racers, the Star was consistently picked as the coolest helmet versus benchmark competitors,” Sackett said. ”We also did thermal imaging tests that verified what the riders were telling us—the Star is a significantly cooler helmet.”
Rock solid stability by design
Another goal for the Star design team was to develop a helmet that is extremely stable not only straight-on at high speeds but also during head checks without creating a whiplash effect. To that end Sackett sought out Bell’s auto racing designers to help with the task. Their years of experience designing helmets for open-cockpit Formula One and IndyCar racing, was of particular interest.
“There’s a helmet from the early ‘90’s called the Feuling SS that many of Bell’s current open-cockpit designs are based on,” explained Sackett. “It was designed with a truncated shape and contouring that gave the helmet a locked-in feel and minimized buffeting, even when the driver was in the slipstream of another car. It involved dialing in enough downforce to remain stable, but not so much as to make the helmet feel heavy or cause neck fatigue.”
For the Star, Bell engineers borrowed from the Feuling design and added features the motorcycle division had pioneered in developing helmets for four-time 500cc World Champion Eddie Lawson. The tweaked Fueling/Lawson design, adds a chin contour that stabilizes the helmet when the head is not straight into the wind; i.e., during head checks or looking through a corner.
“The initial design was a good starting point, but adding the chin contours had an amazing effect when a rider’s head was turned,” said Sackett. “It became a more predictable, stable and linear turn without the whip-effect that some helmets produce.”
Additionally, Bell developed the Track Strip, a small plastic wicker that can be adhered to the Star’s spoiler for enhanced stability at speeds in excess of 130 mph. The 4mm tall strip is molded to fit on the edge of the spoiler and features a radiused front side that comes to an acute edge. That acuteness of that edge, incidentally, is the reason the Track Strip wasn’t molded into the spoiler itself—at that angle it would be virtually impossible to mold as one piece.
“The Track Strip is another gem we gleaned from auto racing,” Sackett said. “It’s designed purely for use in racing or at track days but adds significant stability at those high speeds.”
Bell’s newly-signed Superbike rider Aaron Gobert confirmed Sackett’s statement at the Daytona Tire Test in December, saying the Star was the most stable helmet he’s ever ridden at 175 mph.
3Mode shield is deceptively simple, perfectly clearBell’s overriding goal in developing the Star’s shield system was to make it a transparent part—pardon the pun—of the user experience, according to Sackett. Whether it be swapping shields, opening and closing the shield in stop-and-go traffic, or adjusting it for challenging weather conditions, Sackett’s goal was to “make shield adjustments the least distracting thing on the rider’s event horizon.”
To address shield swapping, Bell developed ClickRelease, a system that only requires pressing a pair of discreet levers, one on each temple, to make the shield pop off. Replacing the shield is equally simple, just align the pivots and press until it clicks in
“When we polled riders about what they liked and disliked about helmets I was amazed at the amount of shield-related anguish out there,” Sackett said. “We decided then having the easiest, most intuitive shield system was a top-priority for the Star.”
The man responsible for ClickRelease, an engineer named Erik Tews, also spent yeoman’s effort on the workings of the installed shield, a according to Sackett.
“Erik basically ate, drank and slept shields for two solid years,” he said. “To give you some scale, an engineer working on a helmet would typically fill up one tech notebook with drawings, calculations and notes for the entire helmet. Erik filled three notebooks on the shield mechanism alone. He made 21 prototypes of it. He can tell you the sine wave of the crack mechanism contours…it really did become his obsession.”
But it’s this kind of attention to detail, according to Sackett, that makes the 3Mode shield such a joy to use. With one finger, a rider can easily toggle the 3Mode Lever between each of the three modes—Lock Mode, Friction Mode and Crack Mode.
Lock Mode is the shield’s firmest and quietest setting. It not only locks down the shield, but pulls it tightly to the gasket, creating a water-tight seal. This is the choice for high-speed scenarios, according to Sackett.
The Friction Mode allows the shield to be freely adjusted with micro-detents from a half-inch open to fully open.
Crack Mode disengages the shield from the gasket and lifts it about a quarter-inch. It was designed to work in tandem with the VFV’s chin vent which can be adjusted to send airflow up the inside of the shield to combat fogging. The shield is also coated with Bell’s Nutra Fog II, it’s most effective anti-fog, anti-scratch and UV coating to date.
“When I first started riding the Star I realized that I was opening and closing the shield purely out of habit,” said Sackett. “I know a lot of helmet makers say their helmets are anti-fog, but in all but the worst conditions I usually only need the top chin vent open. In stop-and-go traffic, the Crack Mode is the most I need. I truly don’t even think about fogging anymore.”
This Star has been a long time comingWhile Bell feels the Star is an epic achievement, it wasn’t an easy one, nor was it quick. According to Sackett, the Star was originally slated to be completed in two years, but it took more than three. A fact he says in retrospect isn’t such a surprise.
“The ventilation and shield systems were extremely complicated not only to design but to tool and manufacture…all tolled we ended up with 75 custom parts on the helmet, so I guess delays were inevitable,” he mused. “But I feel good about it. There was no pressure to take it to market before it was ready and the end product is uncompromised.”
“I suppose it’s some how ironic that making something designed to go so fast would take us so long,” he continued with a laugh. “But when all is said and done, our customers are worth every second of it.”
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