A couple of very specific questions about adding heated grips

[twinfan]

It's been a few months since I first posted when I bought my 06 FJR. Coming from a BMW simply must have heated grips for long distance riding. I've done a lot of research in this forum and have settled on the Dual Star grip warmers, Heat-troller, and ProGrip 699 grips. I have a couple of specific questions about the installation:

- Can the Heat-troller accomodate the current drawn when the Dual Stars are wired for maximum wattage? Based on what I've read this could be about 90W or 7.5A

- To simplify I plan to feed from the blue factory grip connector. One wire comes from the headlight relay. Can the factory wiring upstream handle this much current along with the headlights? By my calculations it could be up to ~17.5A (7.5 for the grips, 10A for two 60W highbeams operating). The headlight fuse is 25A.

- Does someone have a recommendation for a good grounding point?

Thanks,

Tom

 

[FjrVfr]

- Can the Heat-troller accomodate the current drawn when the Dual Stars are wired for maximum wattage? Based on what I've read this could be about 90W or 7.5A

Mine is wired for the hottest setting and the Heat-troller has been fine for about 3 years/50K.

 

[twinfan]

Thanks Fjr/Vfr, that is good to hear. For some reason the Dual Star folks aren't carrying the Heat-troller right now but it's available from other sources. Now if I can just trust the wiring not to fry...

Thanks Fjr/Vfr, that is good to hear. For some reason the Dual Star folks aren't carrying the Heat-troller right now but it's available from other sources. Now if I can just trust the wiring not to fry...

 

[FJReady]

90 watts sounds very high. I don't think you can get Dual Stars to draw that much. IIRC the max draw is more like 36 W.

My recommendation is to go poke around here. Some very useful information on heated grip installation: www.FJR1300.info

 

[twinfan]

Another good source, thanks. Some of the links go to pages I've already checked out. On this one (linky) there was a table showing wattages for various wiring configurations. Maximum was 90W when the Dual Stars were wired in parallel using all of the heating elements.

 

[FJReady]

I think 90 would be two much. I have the two blues (left and right) and two reds wired in parallel via a 3 position switch. Most of the time the low setting is enough. Only on the coldest days when I wear heavier gloves will I use the HI setting.

I tried to buy Dual-Stars recently and as you pointed out they're hard to find. I found the Symtec heaters (I think they're the same thing with a different name) over at California Sport Touring. Pretty good price too. I think $37 for the kit.

Good luck!

 

[twinfan]

Thanks FJRReady. Looks like the Dual Stars allow a few different wiring arrangements where the Kimpex really has only one. Good to know that the lower wattage is adequate. Would also take some strain off the wiring and electrics.

 

[Harald]

- To simplify I plan to feed from the blue factory grip connector. One wire comes from the headlight relay. Can the factory wiring upstream handle this much current along with the headlights? By my calculations it could be up to ~17.5A (7.5 for the grips, 10A for two 60W highbeams operating). The headlight fuse is 25A.
- Does someone have a recommendation for a good grounding point?

Thanks,

Tom

I would suggest installing a switched power strip to power you grips. You'll surely end up installing other farkles and it is much nicer to have a switched source for all those accessories.

I tried using the factory heated grip power wire to power up my Honda ST1300 heated grips that are installed on my bike and it didn't work well. The Honda controller has a voltage sensor and will reduce or kill power to the grips if the system voltage drops enough (13.2 volt is the threshold if I remember correctly). The Honda controller would go into this power shed mode all too often, so obviously the voltage supplied by the stock grip wiring was too low. I rewired the Honda grip controller off my power strip using large gauge wire and now it works fine.

 

[twinfan]

Could be right. I was hoping to avoid the extra aggravation. I don't have the manual in front of me but I recall the factory grips to be 2 ohms each wired in series. That would be a 3A draw at 12V or 36W total. The Dual Stars can be wired for something close to that leading me to think they'll get equally warm as the factory grips with a comparable load on the wiring.

 

[road runner]

I agree with Harald about putting them on a switch power source (which the headlight relay wire is) but instead of a power strip I used a fuse block. I also put in a relay.

I wired the green wire from headlight relay (the one with the blue plug meant to go to stock grips) to the new acc. relay. Then ran a 10 ga. wire, fused from battery pos. to relay, then from relay to fuse block, then to all my high draw accessories.

This way all my high draw acc (like heated gear) go off when bike is off, and won't kill the battery.

Also the only load on the headlight relay wire now is only enough to close the relay, and the accessories take power from the battery.

With a fuse block you can add acc., and fuse them separately. Another side benefit is when your heat troller gets wet and puts your grips on high on a 90* day (until it dries), you can just pull a fuse to turn them off, instead of trying to get to the wires to unplug the grips.

According to Warm & Safe web site there heat trollers max load is 15 amps @ 13.8 volts. This would be 207 watts.

My .02

A.C.

 

[JimLor]

I've had the Dual Stars on my 05 for about 4 years now and it's the best $30 I've spent on the bike. One suggestion, if I were to do it again, I would wrap the clutch side with some tape to insulate between the metal bar and the grip heater. The metal on that side does suck up some of the heat from the grip, not too bad but worth the effort to insulate.

 

[na1g]

I installed the Kimpex heaters on my ST1300 when I got her in '03 (honda didn't have their accessory units available for a while). The Kimpex heaters come as two-levels of heat by switching in more or fewer heating wires. The toggle switch included was hideous so I picked-up a DPDT center-off mini toggle from RadioShack and mounted that in the left switch pod. (By wiring the two switch poles together you get twice the current capacity so a small switch will easily handle the grip's current.) The Kimpex heaters do not use a resistor to waste power to provide a lower setting, like DualStars do. You can avoid the resistor by using a Heat-Trol type controller, I suppose. On the ST I never felt the need for more than two heat settings anyway.

With my '09 FJR I got the Yamama grips - outrageous price but they were a negotiating point. The Yama grips are, in my opinion, vastly over-engineered but work nicely. If I hadn't gotten the OE heated grips I would have installed the Kimpex.

BTW, the control unit used by Kawasaki on the newest C14 Concours looks exactly like the FJR unit.

pete :cold:

 

[johnny80s]

A full sleeve warm n safe liner is 90 watts so it should not be a problem.

 

[07fjrTom]

I would like to pick the brains of some off you more knowlegeable people on this topic. I installed a set of Symtec grip heaters on my 07' yesterday. The install went well and they seem to work like they are supposed to, but they do not get very warm. The Symtec website claims that these grips will draw 3 amps / 36 watts in the high position. I have had heated grips on 2 other bikes but have never installed them myself before. On my other bikes they got a lot warmer. According to the instructions, there is only one proper way to wire these grips, while the info on this site describes the dual star grips as being flexible as to how they are configured to vary the heat output. Does anyone know if I can hook the Symtec grips up in a fashion similar to the dual star setup? They appear to be the same type of element and wiring layout, but I have to admit that I don't have a lot of knowlege to draw from on this matter. I can follow instructions and am mechanically inclined enough to do the install, but I really don't understand how the system works.

I would appreciate any feedback from you all.

Thanks in advance,

Tom

 

[twinfan]

Did my '06 yesterday, as well, using the Symtec heaters and rocker switch. They got warm, not hot, and I couldn't tell much difference between the high and low settings. My research yielded the same result about the Dual Stars but I've never seen a diagram that shows how they would be wired differently. If someone has an alternative I would try it, too.

I have to say it was an easy installation.

 

[dbx]

If you're willing to replace the Hi/Lo switch with a Heat-Troller, you can get some serious heat out of a set of Dual Stars (or Symtec or Kimpex, etc), and the best part is that it's continuously adjustable across the entire range.

Having said that, I don't see why you can't wire a Hi/Lo switch in multiple ways. If I'm reading right, the standard installation calls for heating a small section of the heating elements for Low, and a larger part of the heating elements for High. Well, perhaps Low should be wired to heat the larger part of the heating elements, and High should be wired to heat BOTH parts of the heating elements. That should be pretty simple, and should step up the amount of heat provided.

 

[twinfan]

I thought about an alternate wiring scheme using the hi/lo switch. Unfortunately, once you have the two elements connected for extra heat there is no way to separate them for low operation. You would need a multi-pole switch or relay to accomplish that. Probably much easier to use the Heat-troller. If anyone can scratch out a wiring schematic I'd be willing to try it.

 

[dbx]

I gave it some more thought, too. A low tech way would be to use 2 SPST switches, one for LO and one for HI. Turn both on for extra heat. The most elegant is of course a Heat-Troller, which is how I did it on my last two installs.