Rain gear expectations too high?

[Dickie]

A year ago I decided to finally invest in some quality rain gear. I was tired of arriving at work or home soaked or even worse cold. I couldn’t afford to get gear specific to each season so I opted for hardshell outer layers to wear over my regular riding clothes figuring I could add/remove as needed. I summoned the forum gods for advice and decided on an Endura Flyte jacket and Shower Pass Convertible rain pants. I also purchased some Pearl Izumi WXB waterproof shoe covers. Less than a year in and perhaps 15-20 good tests of the gear I’m sad to say I’m really disappointed. The Flyte started losing it’s repellency after about 5 uses…. pretty poor for an expensive item. After some research I concluded that perhaps by folding the garment up and putting it into my backpack I had weakened the DWR coating. I had also not washed the garment as so many horror stories about incorrect care floated around the web, but it seemed reasonable that by not washing the jacket I was actually hurting it’s water repellency. I washed the jacket per the manufacturers instructions and re-activated the DWR to no avail. This morning I arrived at work soaked. The jacket and pants were not beading up, and were wet on the inside. My base layers were wet as well…… don’t even get me started on my feet. Luckily it was warm so I wasn’t miserable, but this just doesn’t seem right. Am I expecting too much from my gear? Is it too much to ask to ride 20 miles in drizzle/rain and not be soaked when wearing almost new rain specific gear? I specifically didn’t exert myself much this morning to avoid over-heating so I could eliminate that as a factor. Any thoughts? I’m British, this is really pissing me off!

Topic

[AFHokie]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but does anyone know of cycling rain jackets with zipper pulls on the right side?

I’m returning a Showers Pass Double Century RTX jacket due to the zipper pulls on the left side…it shouldn’t matter, but as the only jacket in my closet like that it’ll drive me nuts. I don’t see that improving over time. I also looked at their Elite 2.1 Jacket and Transit jackets and from the website photos, it looks like the pulls are on the right side, but when I called the company the rep said that to reduce costs, all of their jackets are now made that way.

[Author]

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