[Schwagoo]

Its COLD here in Indiana, so I decided to get some heated handgrips. This is my first time installing something like this. But I would consider myself at least a little mechanically competent. I installed my own rear shock and stuff like that (thanks to DIY articles such as this)

I saw these grips advertized elsewhere on the net made my Dual-star for 29.99. Remembering the Tricktape can match/beat almost any advertized price, I gave Shawn a call. Sure enough they were able to get them...for 25 bucks! Score I was sold.
A few days later I got them in and was ready to go to work.

So I went to my friend's heated garage (rode 20 minutes in 20 degrees to get there. BURRR!)

I laid out all the parts...

And my hawk was all ready for surgery..

First thing was to take off the old grips and clean the grip area VERY well. The instructions say to use alcohol -but I couldn't find any so I used brake cleaner. Then I used some water and a paper towel to scrub it down REAL good -and let it dry.

After you remove both grips and clean the contact area VERY well, peel off the backing to the heater element and wrap it around the handlebar as per the instructions say. Then push out all the air bubbles.

**NOTE** After installation, I realized that my right side was indeed warmed than my left side. Now I ain't the brightest bulb on the tree, but after a couple hours of riding and telling myself that it is NOT my imagination, I realized WHY this is the case. As you can see, the left side heater element is wrapped around metal and the right side is around the plastic throttle grip. Duu. The metal handlebar was conducting the heat through my handlebar and the plastic throttle grip was insulating on the bottom side and pushing all the heat to my hand. Wallah. Maybe when you install yours you should consider putting down a layer of electrician's tape or something similar that can withstand some serious heat for prolonged periods of time.

Other side

Once those babies are on there, mix ya up some high-temp epoxy safe for plastic and smear it over the heater element where the grip is going to go.

Then slide that grip on there before that epoxy dries!!! I used an air compressor on both sides -I could have installed the non-throttle side without it, but I think its totally necessary for the throttle side.

After those bad boys are on, find a spot to mount your switch. There isn't much plastic on my hawk, so you may have more options in this department. However I found some kind of supporting bar thing that I drilled a ½ inch hole through and was able to salvage enough metal there to mount the switch.

After you drill your ghetto hole like I did, push that switch in there and secure the lock nut or whatever its called. *Note*, the actual switch looks MUCH better than that. I took this pic before I had put the " High, Low" indicator panel on there. It covers the metal right around the switch that looks bad in this pic.

Here is the front view

Now, you have wires hanging off your handgrips that must be routed and secured from the grips to the switch. Be sure to allow for ample clearance to move the bars back and forth. Zip-tie the wires down and strip the ends. Use pliers to clamp on the ends correctly according to the instructions. READ CAREFULLY! The left side is different than the right sides.

other side

Now plug the wires into the freshly mounted switch

Now that you have the heater elements routed and plugged in, you need some power TO the switch. Plug the yellow wire into the middle switch male adapter. You need to find a switched power source wire. I went into my fuse box and piggybacked off my headlight wire. You also have the option of wiring directly to the battery, another fuse, and a switch. By using the headlight wire, I am just using the fuse built into the bike already.
If you wire directly to the battery, you MUST use a fuse-unless you like the smell of burning plastic when you get a short after a hard rain
Here's that pesky wire...

Piggyback using the little pink piggyback thing...

HA! all done and my grips are rather toasty.

One additional note: At the end of the instructions included with the kit, it gives you some Ohmage(sp) guidelines to check to be sure of a good installtion. Such as check the ohms between Red/blue wires. Well mine were both a few ohms short, even with their leeway of + - 2 , oh well its still hot as it needs to be and I know everything is installed correctly. :shrug Its all good!
The right side is so warm I have to let loose on my grip for a second every minute or so or it gets TOO hot. The left side doesn't get as hot as the right (see **NOTE** above) but it keeps my hand plenty warm.

Somehow I convinced my lovely girlfriend to take a four hour ride with me yesterday after church.. Hahah it was about 25 degrees when we started, and 51 when we got home. She was freezing to death, but at least my hands were warm!!!

Good luck y'all. The installtion sure isn't hard.

Now remember, you won't see this kit on Tricktape's web site, but you can order it from them by calling 1-800-421-1839. Or you could email shawn for more info @ [email protected]

Ask for the Schwagoo Special!! (no, not really. I just made that up )

 

[RACER X]

thanks......:thumb

 

[TwoWheeldTerror]

Well DAYUM! If you had only done this BEFORE I put on the nice aftermarket grips on my cruiser dangit! :mad :redflip

 

[JayMan]

Nice One, Happy You Got Them Installed! Looks Great! :thumb

I feel bad for your poor freezing girlfriend! You better buy her something nice for Christmas!

 

[Joel_Cool]

Great writeup, Schwagoo!

I used fiberglass reinforced packing tape under my left heater element. The fiberglass ribs do pretty well for insulating the bar from the element. No problem after 40,000 miles.

You should submit your writeup to the DIY section.

Again, GREAT JOB!!!

 

[Rez]

Great write up!!!!!! Glad you liked them!!!

 

[Schwagoo]

Joel_Cool said:
Great writeup, Schwagoo!

I used fiberglass reinforced packing tape under my left heater element. The fiberglass ribs do pretty well for insulating the bar from the element. No problem after 40,000 miles.

You should submit your writeup to the DIY section.

Again, GREAT JOB!!!

Good idea on the packing tape.
But whatever ya'll use make sure its pretty thin, as the thicker it is, the harder it will be to get the grip on.

 

[CitizenTony]

Couple of questions for you:

1. Did you wear leather gloves when riding with them. ie. Violator Pro type gloves? or do you still need winter gloves?

2. Does it warm the palm enough to help the back of the hand where the wind hits?

Thanks

 

[Schwagoo]

CitizenTony said:
Couple of questions for you:

1. Did you wear leather gloves when riding with them. ie. Violator Pro type gloves? or do you still need winter gloves?

2. Does it warm the palm enough to help the back of the hand where the wind hits?

Thanks

I wore Tecknic riding gloves. They aren't winter gloves, but they don't have any vents either. They have the Carbon knuckles and the carbon finger protectors. Sorry no pic of them.

My hands were fine riding Interstate speeds. Of course, where the wind hit the tops of my hands for prolonged periods still got chilly riding, but my hands never experienced that "cold ache" that you get when you ride when its cold.

Overall, after you ride, the tops of my hands were noticibly cold -but not uncomfortable at all.

I hope that answered your question...

 

[Joel_Cool]

My experience is your hands get cold but never to the point where safety is a concern. That's all I care about.

 

[stanger92]

damn it if I didn't have those grips that say YZF on them I would do this since I ride all year :mad

P.S. just got back it was over 50 again today! Supposed to get cold and rain/snow mix tomorrow though

 

[thunderex]

why worry about the grips stanger? you can reinstall your grips over the heating elements. i watched someone do this two weeks ago and he kept the original grips on it.

 

[Stitch Jones]

Thank you so much for posting those destructions. I bought the same set up and haven't installed them yet. My instructions weren't as "in depth". Thanks again.

 

[Kzin]

I have the kimpex ones. I have heard that you can wire in a heat troller with them to adjust the temp.

So here's a question....my elements came with a 2ohm 10 watt resistor wired in line with them. Well the wire for the resistor broke after a season's use so I went to replace it but had to wire 2 1 ohm resistors because I couldn't find a 2 ohm. Here's the question.....More resistance = more heat right? so isn't the heat troller just a rheostat that varies resistance? Couldn't you just pick up a rheostat at an electronics store that went from say 1ohm to 10 ohms to make the heat more adjustable? The heat troller is pretty expensive for what it is.....I would think you could find something for under $10 bucks to do the same as the heat troller.

Am I correct in this assumption? If so, where's a good place to find a rheostat? Does it matter if the wattage is 12 instead of 10 watts?

 

[BlueLghtning]

Schwagoo, I don't know if the particular grips you bought are the same, but I have been reading up on the dual-star grips and I saw where their grips put off more electricity on the left grip to compensate for the fact it takes more heat on the left grip. Did you put them on backwards by chance? Every thing I have read on them says that staggard heat works pretty good to make them feel the same.

Here is a pic of the dual-star. See the one labeled throttle.

If you determine that you have them on correctly, the other possibility is to combine both the blue & red wires on the left grip which will get you more wattage out of that grip to bring it up to equal the right?

Check out this page for more on what I have below.

Options for Wiring the Dual-Star Elements
The Dual-Star elements are not without their peculiarities. Each one has three wires, which means that you either connect two of them together or else leave one of them unused. For each resistive element, there is a red wire at one end, a blue wire at the other end, and a white wire that is connected somewhere near the middle of the resistive wire.

You can use just the red and blue wire to wire the entire resistive wire as a single element. You can join the red and blue wire together and use the white wire, in which case you will effectively have two short resistive elements wired in parallel. You can also use only one or the other of the blue or the red wire, leaving half of the resistive wire unused, which is what Marc did initially.

Following are the approximate initial Wattages per grip for each of the three different wiring options, assuming that the right and left are wired in parallel:

Left Right
Parallel (connecting red & blue wire together) 55 Watts 35 Watts
Blue only (omit red wire) 31 Watts 17 Watts
Red only (omit the blue wire) 23 Watts 17 Watts
Series (omit the white wire) 13 Watts 9 Watts

 

[BlueLghtning]

Kzin said:
I have the kimpex ones. I have heard that you can wire in a heat troller with them to adjust the temp.

So here's a question....my elements came with a 2ohm 10 watt resistor wired in line with them. Well the wire for the resistor broke after a season's use so I went to replace it but had to wire 2 1 ohm resistors because I couldn't find a 2 ohm. Here's the question.....More resistance = more heat right? so isn't the heat troller just a rheostat that varies resistance? Couldn't you just pick up a rheostat at an electronics store that went from say 1ohm to 10 ohms to make the heat more adjustable? The heat troller is pretty expensive for what it is.....I would think you could find something for under $10 bucks to do the same as the heat troller.

Am I correct in this assumption? If so, where's a good place to find a rheostat? Does it matter if the wattage is 12 instead of 10 watts?

From what I can tell so far, my understanding is that the heat troller is electronic and actually just cycles the power on and off at certain intervals to obtain the desired temp. The good thing about the Heat Troller seems to be that it causes very little resistance loss where I think a manual rheostat would have more loss. However, if full blast is too much, then whats a little loss in a manual rheostat going to hurt, especially if you can dial in the desired temp for a lot cheaper then the troller. I am with you and I have thought about a manual rheostat to adjust the temp, plus, if it isn't wide open, then you aren't using up all of your bikes wattage which would leave more for other electrics like a vest and such.

I would start with Radio shack for a rheostat.

More resistance = more heat right? so isn't the heat troller just a rheostat that varies resistance?

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the built in resistance of the wires is what determines the amount of heat plus the amount of current getting to the wires. If you add in inline resistor to the circuit, you are efectively lowering the amount of current available and lower the heat output. Some grips that have an high & low, have the resistor wired in for the low setting. A rheostat as you said would allow you to adjust this to vary the temp.

 

[Kzin]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think the built in resistance of the wires is what determines the amount of heat plus the amount of current getting to the wires. If you add in inline resistor to the circuit, you are efectively lowering the amount of current available and lower the heat output. Some grips that have an high & low, have the resistor wired in for the low setting. A rheostat as you said would allow you to adjust this to vary the temp.

That's exactly what I thought, but after a conversation with a good friend who is an engineer on our race cars, and an electrician, more resistance in ohms does indeed produce more heat. You see I had initially replaced my broken resistor with a single 1 ohm resistor and the grips just weren't getting hot. They told me to wire another 1 ohm resistor in line with the first one and it did increase the heat. As is, its still only good to around 38-40 degrees. Below that it's not hot enough. Thanks for confirming what I thought about the rheostat. What wattage do I need to look for?

I know the resistors are 10 Watt but will another wattage rheostat work?

 

[Kzin]

Digikey has a 12.5 watt rheostat with 1-6ohm resistance for $21.95. Dunno if it would work though because of the wattage. Any elctricians care to enlighten us?

 

[Schwagoo]

BlueLghtning said:
Schwagoo, I don't know if the particular grips you bought are the same, but I have been reading up on the dual-star grips and I saw where their grips put off more electricity on the left grip to compensate for the fact it takes more heat on the left grip. Did you put them on backwards by chance? Every thing I have read on them says that staggard heat works pretty good to make them feel the same.

Here is a pic of the dual-star. See the one labeled throttle.

If you determine that you have them on correctly, the other possibility is to combine both the blue & red wires on the left grip which will get you more wattage out of that grip to bring it up to equal the right?

Check out this page for more on what I have below.

Nope. The kit that I got were not labeled throttle/non-throttle. :shrug but I guess its possible that the label was REALLY small and I missed it-

 

[stanger92]

why worry about the grips stanger? you can reinstall your grips over the heating elements. i watched someone do this two weeks ago and he kept the original grips on it.

hmmm I didn't know that. I might have to look into it. thanks