Heated hand grips

In short - they work well.
Canberra at this time of year is fairly cold. I usually ride a mountain bike to work, so I get here with steam pissing off me. The first ~500m are a bit harsh and after that no worries (except the tips of my ears). On the bandit the first ~500m are the best and it's all bad from there.

I bought a pair of Oxford muffs a while ago.. If you've never seen them before, just imagine wool lined sleeping bags over your grips and levers. They work very well, but they're a bit dangerous in traffic because you can't get your hands in and out quickly, and there isn't and provision on the left one for the clutch master reservoir so turning the blinkers on and off is a bit annoying. On the highway they're fine. It was -4C yesterday and I couldn't be arsed to put the muffs on (20 - 30 seconds), 17 minutes later at work I could only just use the levers as I pulled in, and took about an hour for the pain to go. F*&$k that!

I went to Tuggeranong Motorcycles (a.k.a. Tuggeranong Mufflers) after work and picked up a set of Oxford hot hands. I paid $130. Great people there, and it is WELL WORTH ringing them first if your looking for anything for your bike in Canberra. It took an hour and ten to put them on without too many problems. It would have taken sooner, but the instructions say to bodge them up and test them first BEFORE putting them on for good, to check they work for warranty.

The job is not overly complex and the instructions are reasonably detailed. The wiring loom consists of a relay box with +/- to the battery, which I stuck to the frame underneath the right side cover using one of the double sided sticky pads provided (the only one of the two that worked). From that box there are two wires, one is power to the grips and the other is to the control unit which sits on a bracket provided that bolts on to the clutch lever bracket (used glue to marry the panel to the bracket as the supplied sticky pad was a dud). The control panel sits up and in front of the clutch reservoir next to the choke. I did a quick and nasty job with the wiring, just till the next time I have the tank completely off. I undid the two bolts at the back of the tank to lift it slightly while I ran the wires under the tank and pushed them just over the rubber block under the tank.

The only real not-to-plan trouble came with the plastic throttle tube. The instructions said to smooth down the ridges along the tube, but I left them there as they didn't seem to be a problem. There was however a ridge around on the outer end that I had to remove and and another larger one on the inner end of the tube where the (standard) grip slips over. I used a small, sharp chisel and a few gentle taps with the hammer to get rid of these.

The grips come in two models, normal and sports. I got the sports (only ones there), and they are a fair bit bigger than my old grips and have a very rough surface. They feel great. -4C again this morning and got to work with truly hot hands! On the control panel there are three buttons, on/off, + and -. There are 4 settings 30%, 40%, 75% and 100%. I warmed up the bike and had them on 100%, and then sat them on 40% for the rid in, and - they work. Very happy.

Rolls.

Here's a couple of pics of the set up. After riding with them for a while now I am really impressed not only with the fact that they keep your hands warm, but they give the bike a very substantial feel. The original grips are fairly smooth and 30mm diameter, whre the Oxford grips are 33.5mm diameter and have a grippy, "knurled" finnish.

I have added a relay in line close to the battery, by splicing a line into the number plate light to activate it, as the grip's main problem was that you could turn them on without the ignition turned on. It would be a bummer to leave them on after a ride, or park the bike in a public area and have some prick turn thm on and come back to a flat battery.

I bought a pair of Barkbusters Storm plastic handguards to compliment the grips because even when your hands are warm-to-hot on the palm side, the outside is still freezing cold. The hand guards do a fantastic job at deflecting air off your hands, and in warmer climes would probably do instead of heated grips. Around Canberra at least, they work very well together.

Rolls.

I had heated grips on my 650 and had the shop install them before picking up the 1250. They even wired it up to the ignition, which is very handy. Bike is off, grips are off. The handguards don't look to bad on the bandit. They saved my hands on my KLE 500 in the winter time.

Looking at possibly getting some heated hand grips.....are there any others other there apart from Oxfords that people have used and are happy with them?

I don't really like the "bulky" looking controler sitting on the handlebars so found the Symtec Handlebar controller
lockitt.com/Lockitt/product/GPOX696Z.html
(Thanks to madmax in this post)
https://nswbandits.forumotion.net/t1147p45-oxford-heated-grips#33640


Some people seem to have experienced some problems?!
https://nswbandits.forumotion.net/t1507-oxford-heated-grips-problem-with-switch-anyone-else?highlight=heated+hand
https://nswbandits.forumotion.net/t2737-oxford-heated-grips?highlight=heated+hand

Some people suggested Daytona grips or Moose racing. Has anyone had experience with these or any others?

Ideas/suggestions?!