Z Custom Leathers
Z CUSTOM LEATHERS
CW EVALUATIONS
Design-your-own riding suit
MOTORCYCLISTS COME IN ALL shapes and sizes, all with our own preferences when it comes to design, colors and features in a protective riding suit. With this in mind, Z Custom Leathers (15902 Manufacture Ln., Huntington Beach, CA 92649; 714/890-5721) offers customers a multitude of options when ordering a set of leathers.
Although it's possible to make a fitting appointment at the company's Southern California shop, the majority of Z's busi ness is done via mail order. The prospective customer is sent an information packet that contains a catalog, a measurement sheet, samples of 21 leather colors and the Z "coloring book"-blank line art of leather suits.
You can develop design ideas by coloring in any of the vari ous standard suit patterns, or you can lay out an original pat tern of your own. Your choices aren't over yet, either. Z tailors its suits for your particular type of riding, whether you roadrace, dirt-track, drag race or street ride, and there's a variety of comfortand safety-related op tions to choose from.
Cycle World's Associate Editor Don Canet ordered a Z Custom roadrace suit that included plastic body armor in the shoulders, elbows/forearms and knees, and closed-cell rubber pads in the hips. The suit also has an ad justable velcro collar, leather expan sion panels above the knees and at the lower back, stretch/vent fabric at the bend of the elbows and behind the knees, and ventilation holes in the chest, inseam and back/kidney areas. As with all Z riding suits, steel zip pers are used at the front, the calves and the forearms; there's a double layer of leather across the buttocks; and nylon mesh lines the interior. From the time they send in the design specifics and a 50-percent deposit, buyers should allow about four weeks
for a suit's completion.
Although we haven't crash-tested our set of Z leathers, they've held up very well to the rigors of racetrack and sport-riding duty, and judging from other Z leathers that Canet was kind enough to bail-off in during his previous roadrace career, the Z suit offers as much road-rash protection as anything on the market.
Pricing on Z Custom leathers starts at $625. Our suit, which was pretty well loaded with options, including $225 worth of lettering and custom logos, came to about $1500. Laying out more than a grand for riding ap parel is serious business, but consider ing this suit's many features, quality of construction and tailored fit, we'd rank it as a pretty good investment. t~l
