Using Heated Grips and Gloves together

Here's my "Farkle d' Jour":

As mentioned in the other thread on heated grips, I already have a set of Dual Star grip heaters installed underneath my Stock Yamaha grips and being driven by a Warm'nSafe Heat-troller for Grips. I have the Heat-Troller control knob and LED indicator located in the upper part of the B panel on the left side of the dash:



The blue and white output wires of the Heattroller are run to the back side of my ignition switch (via a flex loop to accommodate turning the bars) on the upper fork tree, where the wires then spit to go off to each of the grips. The grips are wired in parallel for maximum heat power.

I also have a pair of Gerbings' Snowmobile heated gloves that I bought from NiceRumble last winter, but have not really used much.

Wanting to use the installed Heatroller to also control the power to my gloves, I simply cut the cigarette lighter plug/switch off the end of the short length of supplied power cord. That cord terminates on the other end with a male coaxial connector. I spliced that cord into into the grips junction point on the back of the ignition switch, thereby putting the gloves in parallel with the grips.

So now I can just run the coiled "Y" cord provided with my heated gloves to that coax jack on the top fork clamp. When the gloves aren't being used I can just unplug them and the grips will operate exactly as they normally did before.

The resistance of the grip heaters are 7.2 ohms each, 3.6 ohms in parallel. So they will put out ~53 watts max output at a nominal 13.8 volts, drawing 3.8 amps.

The gloves measure 10.2 ohms each, 5.1 ohms together when connected to the Y cable. They will put out ~37 watts @ 13.8V and draw 2.7 amps.

According to the Warm'nSafe web site's specs on the Heattrollers: "Max Load in Standard Configuration - 15 amp at 13.8 volt", so the grips and gloves will only be drawing about 6.5 amps max or half of the rated maximum of the conmtroller by my calculations.

Can't wait to try them out...

Fred

There you go thinkin again. That sounds like a really good idea. I wish I thought of it a week ago, because I just ordered another troller for my gloves.

I may have to do the same, then use the controller for something else, or send it back.

The potential downside of using a single controller is that you won't be able to adjust the glove heat independent of the grip heat. So it very well may be that the gloves will warm up the backs of my hands before the grips do anything. Or vice versa.

But, because they will both have the same end goal of keeping my hands warm I think it will probably work out OK like this. I'll report back when I get a chance to test it thoroughly.

As detailed in my review of the First Gear Glacier gloves, I was able to take a nice day-long ride through the chilly fall New Hampshire mountains yesterday. Although the First Gear gloves were more or less of a flop, I was very pleased with how my Gerbings heated snowmobile gloves performed using the shared grip HeatTroller.

When using the First Gear gloves I had been increasing the control on the heattroller gradually all morning and by the time I stopped about 2 hours into the ride, I had it dialed up to full power, trying to chase the chill out of my hands. At that point I switched over to the Gerbings heated gloves and the relief was immediate and most welcome. I had to dial the heattroller down to about 1/4 power to keep my hands from getting overheated and sweaty. At that setting, I know from experience and feeling with my bare hands, the grips are barely warm at all.

Running the heattroller cranked down that far is a really good thing for the battery charge, especially on 1st gens. With both grips and gloves being driven, my Datel meter was dropping from 14.3V to 13.6V as the 'troller cycled on and off, with the only other accessories being my GPS, Radar detector and Starcom1. But my Datel is currently still wired into the same power switching relay that drives the accessories power strip, so I don't think the voltage drop is quite that much at the battery. I've been talking about rewiring the Datel for over a year now and should eventually get off my sorry ass and get it done. :glare:

In summary, I think running the heated grips and heated gloves in tandem is very do-able and there doesn't appear to be any downside of running them that way other than the increased load on the charging system. Wiring the heattroller output with a SPDT switch to route the power to either the grips or the gloves may be a good option for using a single heattroller for the two applications and scrimping on the watts.