About three years ago I decided it was time for a new helmet. I had been running this same Bell MX-9 for a few years now (way too long). No big crashes, just a few scratches but over time the pads had become less and less and I know the crush able foam degrades too.
I didn’t need any features that some of the other helmets had so it was going to be more of a replacement and not an upgrade – if that makes sense.
For Christmas I received a new MX-9 (now with MIPS). Thanks Chris! It was plain white and after verifying that it fit, I had left it in the box. I was thinking about getting a new SENA unit but with no cash coming in I opted for just ordering a new helmet kit that has new speakers, mic, and everything but the unit itself. I think it was $45.
All of my helmets have an orange bill to them. My mountain bike helmets too. It’s easy to pull it off and spray it with plastic coat. As I was looking at doing the same thing to this one, I kept thinking that looking at it from above – it kind of had a Stealie silhouette built into it. I see Stealies everywhere. Did you know that The Shoreline venue was built as a Stealie? Weir Everywhere!
I took a picture of the helmet from above and then in Photoshop layered the right size over the top. And that’s how it all started.
I showed it to a few people and generally the consensus was ok, not great, but ok. My helmet continued to sit in the box… Then LAB2V came up and I had visions of painting the helmet for that. My bike mods took much more time and energy than I thought and so even though I had the bike done, I just didn’t have anything left to get the helmet done. So I rode with my old one.
This year would be different. I started to get the stealie done by cutting vinyl on the wife’s Cricut. I realized right away there was little to no chance of making it stick around the curved dome as a sticker. It would have to be paint. I could use most of the vinyl as a stencil, tape the rest and airbrush it with an acrylic enamel car paint.
That got me to thinking I could also add a little color. My 690 was now wrapped in KTM orange with a hint of blue (like the 1290 Super Adventures). So I had the local auto paint shop mix up an orange, a blue, and a off black – and because my 690 wrap was done in matte, I did this paint in matte as well.
Now, I was thinking of an orange front / top – with a black stealie. I wasn’t sure about where or how to bring in the blue yet.
I sanded and prepped the helmet. It had Mylar BELL stickers (really thin) under the stock clear coat. I decided not to sand them completely out. It’s just a dirt bike helmet, right?
I taped and laid out where I thought the stealie would go first.
Next I determined where the Orange base would need to be to cover the area behind the stealie and still go with the contours of the helmet. I decided on a large area on top and then a smaller wavy stripe a little lower. I also decided that each side would be different. In a way that’s easier as I didn’t have to worry about duplicating it perfectly from side to side.
Next, I gave it a few coats of orange enamel (I think I did 4 thicker coats). I was really liking this matte finish. It did seem a little brittle though.
For the blue I was going to do a similar band on the lower half. Then somewhere I got the idea of adding a Jerry. There’s this really famous picture of Jerry standing in front of the Great Pyramid when they played there. The wind blowing his hair back. Everyone knows that image. Iconic.
I asked around to see if could find an image I could use as a stencil. Nobody had one so I took the image and then played with contrast levels until I came up with a solid figure I could use. I then cut the reverse out on the Cricut and used that with a free flow tape line to put a Jerry on each side.
I wasn’t worried about the bell sticker as it was really thin and I was going to blanket in a thick layer of blue. Besides, it’s a dirt bike helmet, right?
Next I taped and painted a wavy thin line in blue kind of like I did with the orange above it. With the Jerry I think it looked better to go thinner than I did with the orange.
At the back, I knew I was going to add a Jerry Handprint. This I would do in black. I crafted the thin blue lines on either side to end before they ran into the handprint. While I had originally taped them so they connected they actually don’t. You can see how unsymmetrical the two sides actually are from this angle. The DOT label will be covered by a Firefighter sticker after everything is done.
Next up is was to paint the stealie. With the good base of orange, I did my best to use a stencil I had cut on the Cricut. Because of the dome shape, ou can see there’s a bunch of darts that had to happen just to get most of it to work.
It would have been much better to have had an artist hand paint it – but I couldn’t find one to do it.
With the stencil down as best I could get it – and reinforced with other tape here and there it was time to paint. Boy does this look scary!
I put on 4 or 5 coats of my “off black”. When it was all dry it was time to remove the tape and see how fucked I was. Imagine my horror when I removed the tape to find…
Just kidding! It wasn’t perfect but it was ok. I had a few areas I would have liked to sand and do again butt hen I thought – it’s a dirt bike helmet – who cares, right? I attached the bill so I could then mark where I need to paint the stealie on that.
Next up was to fill in some of the white areas. I had a crazy idea of doing contour lines – similar to both my 690 and 950. That’s kind of why I also went with an off black. My biggest issue would be that I couldn’t stencil these. I could, but it would have taken a very very long time. I was thinking I could do something with just a paintbrush. Picture a pin striping professional. Then look at me. I am not that guy.
But, I grabbed my old helmet and bought a few really fine brushes and gave it a practice run. Why not try? You can see I tried different techniques, different ideas. It was ok, but really not.
My daughter happened to come by. She’s a fantastic artist. Usually doing watercolor, but she had so much better brush strokes than I did. She offered, so I gave her a can of paint, my brushes, and the general idea of what I was looking for and just left it to her to do what she wanted. It’s just a dirt bike helmet, right?
A few weeks later she had them all done and gave me the helmet back. Now it was time for the clear coat.
For Clear Coat I used this super toxic stuff for my mountain bike frame and was going to do the same for this. It comes in a regular looking spray can but also has something that you need to break inside the can and then shake like hell before using.
Garage door open, full face mask with special filters. It goes on thick and heavy. Once it’s on you can sand with 20,000 grit to get a smooth finish – but once again, it’s a dirt bike helmet, right? I used all of the can on the helmet and bill.
You can see my mountain bike that I painted in the background. Very similar color scheme.
Once everything was dry – I pulled off all the tape and put it all together for the first time. It’s really looking better than I am worthy of! Thanks Em!
Here’s a short video I took of the finished design.
I then added my SENA kit, and added the Velcro for the Goggle straps. Now to get it broken in and dirty!
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, had a big cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and is currently building a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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