How much do the ear flaps on a giro advantage really help?

Im thinking about chop off those ear flappy things off my giro advantage bc they irritate me. Am I about to commit a mortal aero sin??? I don’t have visor so how much are they really helping me?

your helmet will then not be race legal pretty much anywhere
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Just get the Selector and remove the bottom piece. That’s what I’m doing. I think Mary Beth Ellis did this in Kona as well, basically turns the helmet into a Rudy Project Syton.

your helmet will then not be race legal pretty much anywhere

This. The RD may not inspect the helmets and you may get away with it. But if they do, and they discover bits of the helmet missing, you’ll have very little time to come up with a replacement helmet before swim start. You want to stay calm and collected before a race. Last thing you wanna do is run around begging for a helmet, and if you find one it probably won’t be aero.

From an aero perspective, those ear flaps matter a lot.

how much is ‘a lot’? If I’m going to drop some money on new race helmet then I’ll just buy an air attack. I’m just being a cheap ass…

An air attack is 200 dollars and over $70 more than what I paid for a significantly faster (10w), new, Giro Advantage 2.

depends on how big your ears are.