Morning all.....

Got a quick question.... Im planningon fitting oxford heated grips and Klan heated vest to the Honda and wondered if the battery/alternator will cope ok? Electrcs aren't my strong suit!!

Thanks....

I can tell you I used electric heated gloves all last winter and I had no problem. I am told that the alternator puts out more than enough juice to handle it. I was considering heated grips but the idea of heated gloves made more sense to me.

Jesse in Atlanta

With the Givi screen you may not need heated grips. It all depends how cold it gets up there in the frozen wastelands!

Cheers,

As I am new to the concept of heated clothing but can imagine the benefits here in the frozen north, can any one tell me how they all connect to the Swings electrical system. In other words if you had say gloves, vest, boots etc. do they go through a hub or do they all connect to the battery separately. Can you use a single controller to control all items?

I got 5 heated things hooked up no prob

Bigbird has listed a great example of where you should start! We all encourage this method and it protects the Silverwing electrical system. DennisB makes some great products also.

I use a Gerbing Jacket liner and a set of gloves and it works fine. Somewhere in these pages one member breaks down the the watt usage for the silverwing systems and what is left for "extras". If I recall correctly is was approx 10 amps.

Gerbing wattage chart:
Gerbing

Fuse block diagram:
Fuse Block

My Block:

I have the main fuse that came with my Gerbings gear directly connected to my battery, the other end is a pigtail that connects to my jacket and my jacket has outlets for pants. My jacket has connectors that come out of the zipped pockets of the wrist area to connect to gloves. My pant liners also connected from outlet of jacket has also pigtails from ankle area to connect to heated socks or insoles.Hope that helps

Thanks for all your replies, most helpful. I will also check out DennisB's supply as suggested.

Tank, is your thigh-bone connected to your knee-bone, too?

When you buy the Gerbing equipment, you have a choice of a either one or two zone controllers. The controller plugs into a short fused connector that goes directly to the battery. The dual controller will allow the vest to have a different setting than the pants or however you decide to hook things up. I highly recommend the two zone controller if you are going to run more than a coat liner.

At the Gerbing website, there is a FAQ section that will take you through every known question about the gear.

I have the vest, pant liner, gloves and boot inserts. When I am riding the Silverwing, I use the vest and gloves the most often. A well charged battery is the key to success with heated clothing. If your battery gets weak from age, get a new one.

Once upon a time I added up everything that I could think of for electric usage on the Swing. I think it only came up to a little over 200 watts PLUS whatever the fuel injectors/injection system uses. The alternator puts out 440 watts at 5000 rpm. This leaves you plenty of room for heated gear.

Gerbings jacket liner runs 77 watts, their T5 gloves run 27 watts. I am not sure what the pant liner or shoe liner use. It all runs off one connection to your battery or 12v outlet so you don't have cords dangling from everywhere.

I've run some cheap WalMart driving lights for two years (100 watt total) and never had the battery discharge on me. I've only had the heated gear since early October, but I tend to leave the driving lights off if I'm running the heated gear. One day I will get a voltage meter to see if the battery discharges if I run all of it at the same time.

The Gerbings stuff is very good quality. Any heated gear you get should fit you snugly or it won't feel very warm.

I bought a battery powered vest that runs on 8 aa batteries and it does a very good job. It was only $20 so I thought I would take a gamble on it. It lasts approx 3-4 hours and since I always use rechargeable batteries it doesn't cost anything for me to run.

I was surprised that it works so well for the money. I just did a search on "yahoo" for "battery powered heated vests" and there are quite a few with one lasting up to 21 hours, but at a lower heat temp. The highest heat temperature is 156 degrees and it says it lasts 4 hours.

If you don't have an outlet or don't want to put one in you may want to think of one. You can also use it just walking around or at football games and things.

Chilliwing: i'd recommend the two controller. I use the Gerbing jacket liner (its really a light jacket) and glovers. When i tried them on only one controler I found that I needed a lot more heat to my hands than my body so now I run them separately. In contrast, a buddy uses only one controller and says his hands stay perfectly comfortable. I bought and tried the socks several years ago but find that I don't really need them so they just lay in the drawer unused. A pair of Carhart merino wool socks work well for my climate.

On this subject, a group of us toured Gerbing's new plant here in N.C.
I'll post this story in the General Chat section.