Heated gear

[rboe]

After reading about some of you folks going for the heated gear I started looking around. First Gear stuff was sold out locally (gee, I wonder why), Gerbing is darn pricy so I checked out CycleGear and their HotWired product. Like Gerbing it has a lifetime warranty. Unlike Gerbing it comes with all the kit to install and get you going (minus the temp controller) whether you get gloves alone, liner or vest or pants.

I went with the glove liners and jacket liner. Instructions suck the big one. Had to go back to the store thinking either the temp controller or the liner was toast. Turns out you need to press the button and HOLD to turn it on/off.

The clerk was knowledgable but did not know really how the controller, liner, gloves thing worked. I had to noodle that out myself (did I say the instructions suck?).

Unlike the gloves, the liners don't have a temp controller, I was told they are hardwired for Medium. It appears to me, with the jacket providing power and fed via the temp controller the best I can get is medium and if I dial down the jacket the gloves will also dial down. Not so good; field testing will confirm.

For less than the price of Honda heated grips I got liners for the gloves (their full gloves were bulky, no armor and online reports suggest not ready for prime time) and a jacket liner. With the extra parts I was able to prep the Griso for use too. So I can use TWO bikes with heated gear! Woot!

Hope to field test over the next few days to see what they do for me.

[the Ferret]

I plan on testing my liner again tomorrow while going up to my dealers Christmas party. I am usually the only customer that rides to it. Supposed to be 16 tomorrow morning...and no snow !

[rboe]

How long of a ride?

[the Ferret]

If I go direct about 18 miles, but will probably be more like 25 or 30 cause I know an indirect way that is a lot more fun.

[rboe]

Long enough to freeze. Unheated, I'm good for about twenty minutes. Our coffee site in Cave Creek is roughly 30 minutes from the house, long enough to show weak links in my gear, but close enough that it won't kill me. I hope.

18 degrees, that will hard on your bike too.

[the Ferret]

Well crapola....just woke up to find 1/2" of snow covering everything. Weather terrorists missed forcasting that! I should have ridden yesterday grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[rboe]

Set your gear on Nuke, it'll melt the snow for you!

Went to the grotto, gloves were nice and toasty, jacket with only the electric liner was breezy. Looks like I'll need the need to use the jacket liner too. At least with that coat. But it was about 50, so not a high stress test. Love the glove liners now! This was on the Griso, it has hand guards which help a lot (it was the Guzzi's turn to hit the road). This gear could spoil a guy.

Sidebar. The Griso also has 550 watts of power available, which may come in handy if I add the pants.

[rboe]

Made sure the outer jacket (First Gear Kilimanjaro) was all buttoned up, heat set to medium (had warmed up to 61) and ditched the glove liners for the ride home. Mucho better. No internal breezes, nice and toasty. Next year I'll add the pants.

I have grip heaters on the Griso (I installed them last year) and while they work (at least the throttle side, clutch side tends to heat the handlebar instead of the grip) and I have to say having a warm glove beats hot grips six ways to Sunday.

Just wish I knew how much current these devices were drawing. When I'm in Minnesota next year I think I'll score on the voltage indicator I posted in another thread on the CB (the Griso has one built in) so I can see how bad things are.
Found wattage details on the Cycle Gear web site:
22 watts for the gloves
83 watts for the jacket liner
46 watts for the pants liner
151 total watts.