Heated Grips: Any naysayers?

[breakaway]

Heated grips alone? I found mine to be absolutely useless. The wind is carrying away heat from your fingers and body significantly faster than the heated grips can. I found I had to grip the heated grips tighter than my monkey when I'm beating it to even feel any warmth at highway speeds. I'd say you'd need hand-guards to reduce air flow or else they're totally useless.

A heated vest under your jacket may be a far better option.

[rastuscat]

Geez Pete, you might as well have a car

😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁

[samgab]

Well, my Oxford "Premium" Touring heated grips arrived, a couple of days ago, and I installed them. Pretty simple and painless process, and they feel pretty good as just standard grips, without the heating part. Not too thick.
I did some riding today, nothing overly cold or long, but I did try out the heated grips.
And yeah, my initial thoughts, pretty unexceptional. Yes, my palms were cosy and warm the whole time, even a bit too hot until I turned the level down a couple of clicks; but the tips of all of my fingers were still a bit cold. Mind you, I'm sort of in the habit of riding with my hands open and my fingers covering the brake and clutch levers most of the time, so that would be the case. But even when I deliberately closed my hands around the grips, I still found, as others have said, that my fingertips were still a bit cold. And that was in pretty mild winter weather, and a couple of fairly short trips. I suppose on longer trips in colder weather, at motorway speeds it will be nice to have them though.

Certainly better than nothing, but the one thing that makes the most difference to me for cold weather riding is a one piece head/neck warmer tube thing. Keeps wind noise down, ears/chin/cheeks warmer, stops cold wind shooting up into my helmet or down my neck, chest, or back, and just makes me way more comfortable riding in cold weather.

[SaferRides]

I rode in some Waikato fog today. That must be the coldest non-frozen substance known to man - 10 minutes and my finger tips were cold. My hands have always felt warm before in the Revit Alaska gloves.

I don't know that heated grips would have helped, as the rest of my hands were OK.

Time for heated gloves perhaps.

[AllanB]

Well, my Oxford "Premium" Touring heated grips arrived, a couple of days ago, and I installed them. Pretty simple and painless process

The new ones just hook straight to the = - on the battery right? Some fancy electronics turn them off on their own?

[pete376403]

The Oxford controller is "supposed " to turn itself off when battery voltage drops below a certain point. Some people have found the certain point is 0 volts.

I've never trusted the feature, preferring to remember it for myself

[samgab]

The new ones just hook straight to the = - on the battery right? Some fancy electronics turn them off on their own?

Yeah, you just hook it up directly to the battery terminals. Couldn't be easier. No mucking around with tapping into a wire from the tail light and using a relay etc.
And I've found this auto detect and turn-off feature is great, it works perfectly. Basically it is a 2-level failsafe. Number one is when the voltage source becomes electrically quiet, eg, it stops receiving the pulsing that comes through when the motor is running, it detects the "quiet" voltage and goes to standby mode after 2 minutes, which turns the heaters off, then after 5 minutes they shut off altogether. The second level of failsafe, is if the voltage drops below 11.5V at any time, they will immediately go into standby mode, and again off completely after 5 minutes.
The smart switch parasitic current draw is only 71 microamps (0.071mA), so it's way too low to discharge the battery even over a long time period. It's much less than the batteries' own rate of self-discharge.

Oh, and having now ridden with these heated grips in some pretty cold weather lately, I'm a complete convert. I've joined the "never going back to not having heated grips" fraternity. For the entry price of about $140 (discounted price), it's a no brainer, IMO.

[samgab]

The Oxford controller is "supposed " to turn itself off when battery voltage drops below a certain point. Some people have found the certain point is 0 volts.

I've never trusted the feature, preferring to remember it for myself

I've heard, anecdotally, that the previous version (V7) of their controller had a few glitches like this in some cases, but their current version (V8), has apparently ironed out all of those bugs and is great. I've tested mine out pretty thoroughly, and it always detects when I turn the engine off, and it turns the grips off 2 minutes later every time. My repeated tests have given me the confidence to just let it do its thing now.

[MarkH]

The new ones just hook straight to the = - on the battery right? Some fancy electronics turn them off on their own?

I'd trust them - yeah right!

I've connected my Premium Touring Grips to my Eastern Beaver PC8, when I turn the ignition off it cuts power to the grips (as well as a few other accessories that are also wired to the PC8). A simple relay is enough so that the grips are definitely off when you turn the key off, I wouldn't do it any other way - who wants/needs their grips on when the bike is turned off?

[rastuscat]

I've heard, anecdotally, that the previous version (V7) of their controller had a few glitches like this in some cases, but their current version (V8), has apparently ironed out all of those bugs and is great..

On a slight tangent, isn't it frustrating to have paid full retail for a V7 and bought a few glitches?

If the manufacturer knows he's sold a dodgy product (as demonstrated by upgrading it to V8) he should surely do an upgrade to previous customers.

[caspernz]

I rode in some Waikato fog today. That must be the coldest non-frozen substance known to man - 10 minutes and my finger tips were cold. My hands have always felt warm before in the Revit Alaska gloves.

I don't know that heated grips would have helped, as the rest of my hands were OK.

Time for heated gloves perhaps.

Yep, out on a training ride yesterday with a couple of the lads. All sweet at Bombay, drop down the hill to Waikato and end up in pea soup. Across the river at Mercer and could barely see 100 metres ahead. I run heated grips, but also popped on the thermal under gloves, glad I did too for it was a touch chilly. The most exciting bit was the number of car drivers who had no lights on at all in those conditions

[SaferRides]

Yep, out on a training ride yesterday with a couple of the lads. All sweet at Bombay, drop down the hill to Waikato and end up in pea soup. Across the river at Mercer and could barely see 100 metres ahead. I run heated grips, but also popped on the thermal under gloves, glad I did too for it was a touch chilly. The most exciting bit was the number of car drivers who had no lights on at all in those conditions

I was going to Coromandel, so turned on to SH2. It was sunny and cool at first, but thick, cold fog after Waitakaruru, which was still there when I rode back to Auckland at 4 PM.

Coro was great though after the climb from Kopu.

[Blackbird]

I was going to Coromandel, so turned on to SH2. It was sunny and cool at first, but thick, cold fog after Waitakaruru, which was still there when I rode back to Auckland at 4 PM.

Coro was great though after the climb from Kopu.

My patch........ except that I almost never ride the Loop - just the coast road to leave the Peninsula. It would have been a great day for riding or fishing. Pity about all the domestic jobs for my Chief Financial Officer

[rastuscat]

Yep, out on a training ride yesterday with a couple of the lads. All sweet at Bombay, drop down the hill to Waikato and end up in pea soup........................................The most exciting bit was the number of car drivers who had no lights on at all in those conditions

It's happening more often.

Modern cars have auto headlights, which people have learned to trust and just rely on.

In fog, there's enough ambient light to trick the lights into thinking it's daylight. So the headlights stay off.

Cars act on programming. They don't think.

[caspernz]

It's happening more often.

Modern cars have auto headlights, which people have learned to trust and just rely on.

In fog, there's enough ambient light to trick the lights into thinking it's daylight. So the headlights stay off.

Cars act on programming. They don't think.

Auto headlights, and lots of cars have an illuminated dash regardless of whether lights are on or off. But yeah, smarter cars tends to lead to dumber drivers it seems.

As an aside, the amount of light was such that it was making my glasses think they needed to start going dark as well. Yet forward visibility in the 100m range made that unwelcome