Heated hand grips - what not to do

[v8s&2wheels]

My grips require some revs to keep going. Fine on the open road but stop at the lights too long and the grips turn off...

Cant say ive had that problem. Is your bike carb or injected? Perhaps you might need to adjust your idle speed up a little bit to help with the draw coming from the grips?

[pritch]

Perhaps you might need to adjust your idle speed up a little bit to help with the draw coming from the grips?

Injected - manual enrichment control. Revving the bike while sitting at the lights doesn't appeal much though.

[mctshirt]

I sympathise with the scratched tank but it can go horribly wrong in other ways.

Saturday morning I thought putting some heated grips on was a marvellous idea to reduce the bite of a neverending winter.

Fitting the new grip to the left side was a breeze so with optimism overflowing I moved to the right side. Got the old grip off pretty well intact and gave the new one a bit of a shove on to see if it could be fitted without modification of the plastic throttle body. With a bit of brute force and ignorance the grip was pushed up to the odd shaped bit of plastic the original Suzuki grip fitted over. Hmmm - the new grip won't go over that - she'll be right - not aesthetically pleasing but I can live with it and off i went intending to wire it up the following day.

Back into the garage on Sunday morning, took one look at the big ugly bit of plastic and couldn't live with it. Hmmmmm - not enough room for a file in there - some frustrating minutes getting the grip back about 5mm to fit a hole saw in there which hacks the offending plastic off at a pleasing pace with needle nose pliers speeding up the process even more and everything covered in plastic snow.

Now using a coarse saw on delicate plastic is not without risk as an over zealous hack can go a little deep here and there but she'll be right. Saves time with the fiddly filing I crowed to myself. Now I'm finished near enough to rough enough and give the grip a good heave to close the newly acquired gap. SNAP goes the throttle body at the previously weakened points - oh bother. Oh dear. Gosh darnit.

Long story short after desperate texts and phone calls the VX now has some Mud Bug DNA and the owner very thoroughly learned (again) about rushing a delicate jobby and leaping before looking. Loving the warm hands but they came at a price

[kit]

Me and my friend fitted mine, but had to alter the bracket that holds the switch, but no probs fitting them, but crikey there was a damn lot of wiring to try and hide!!!

[Forest]

I use hairspray to put my grips on.

Just borrow a can of hairspray from the missus, put a few squirts inside the grip, and slide it over the bars.

The hairspray acts as a lubricant. So it's bloody easy to get the grip into place. Then the solvent evaporates and the grip is locked into place.