The Tour Master Caliber pant is a “better” version of their basic Overpant design. This style covers all the same bases of being a workhorse waterproof overpant for everyday commuting or touring but with a few added convenience features… all for another twenty bucks. This overpant design features long side zippers to facilitate wearing them over your street clothes. Armor is included for the knees and options CE hip armor is available. Both men’s and women’s sizes are available (take the link below for the other gender).
So what does the Caliber pant offer over Tour Master’s basic overpant? You get two front cargo pockets; more noticeable night time reflectives and most notably, you get a removable thermal liner to give some additional insulation in cold weather.
Like the basic overpant,, the Caliber’s pant legs are fitted with long side zippers all the way from the cuff to the hip to allow you to just step into them to cover your jeans or pants. They’re much like chaps in that regard. The long side zipper is “two way” meaning there is a zipper pull on both ends. When the overpants are on, you can use the upper zipper pull to allow access to your pants pocket to pull out our wallet, keys, etc. without having to undo the waist band to reach in. At the cuff end is an easy to use Velcro adjuster to get the right fit over your shoes or boots.
On each side of the waist band are two large Velcro adjusters to fit the waist. There is a lot of adjustment here, so they should work for you over a variety of clothing, or even if you’ve been neglecting your diet plan. To help with fit and ease of motion, the pants have expansion sections below the waist in back and above each knee. In the back is a short zipper for connection to a Tour Master or Cortech jacket. The mating half of the zipper is supplied with the pants in case you want to adapt another brand jacket to make it zipper-compatible.
The shell of this pant is made of a sturdy nylon material and is made waterproof by a fixed liner. Without the aforementioned thermal liner installed, you’d probably be comfortable in temps up to “mild”, but there isn’t a venting feature here, so in summer you won’t be comfortable. But with the thermal liner installed, you can handle colder temps. The fixed waterproof liner should perform well in rain or shine.
Tour Master is featuring SafeTech brand armor in their 2020 and later products. The knee armor included is a CE level 2 design made of a flexible, more “squishy” rubberized material, which I think is an improvement in comfort over past designs using less flexible black solid rubber. The pockets situated on the inside liner of the pant holds the knee armor in place and is built with a “high-med-low” adjustment system to allow you to get a good fit over your knee. Simple thin foam pads are fitted into armor pockets in the hip, optionally you can beef up the hip armor to SafeTech units are available at a very low cost by taking the link at the bottom of this page.
The main consideration in choosing this Caliber pant over the standard Overpant is the inclusion of the removable thermal liner. If your travels will take you into winter, then this pant should be your pick. :: Paul, 01-29-21
