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Forrest Friedrich's Hot Grips |
| To those who think that sport bikes aren't for
farkeling, I say HAH! Today I installed Hot Grips, one of the nicest products I've had the
pleasure of installing on anything, on my VFR. The product and installation are identical
on an ST, so the info seems appropriate here. For those three of you who don't know what
they are, Hot Grips are just what the name implies, heated handgrips. They may seem like
an unnecessary luxury, but when you're crossing the Nevada desert in August at 5 a.m. and
it's 39F outside, you need 'em. Unlike the Kimpex snowmobile grip heaters, which go under your grips, Hot Grips are completely self contained; your old grips get tossed. They seem to be a medium hardness, but, at 1.45" in diameter, are pretty big. Good for carpal tunnel, I suppose, and there's a lot of surface area to radiate heat out to your paws. They're available in three different lengths, any of which will work on an ST; see next paragraph. The interior is hard plastic, with deep and wide longitudinal grooves running through them. The idea behind the grooves is that you apply epoxy to the bars, slide the grips on, and the epoxy locks into the grooves. The right grip pretty much has to be epoxied onto the throttle sleeve, but if you think you might ever want to change bars, they do have a provision in the instructions for not using epoxy on the left side. That optional setup worked fine for me, as I have Heli-Bars, and wanted the option of being able to remove them. The left side grip now slides on and off easily, but is secure when the bar weight is in place. I start getting a feel for a product's quality as soon as I open the package and start reading the instructions. Too many instructions sound like they've been translated from Swahili by way of Serbo-Croation, and rarely do they 'fit' my bike; I just assume I'll have to fiddle to make it work. Imagine my joy when I opened a small package marked "Spacer kit for all Honda Sport Bikes such as VFR800 and ST1100...". Imagine that: someone actually went to the trouble of seeing how their product would work with my bike, then REALLY went to some trouble and had spacers of various sizes made to make installation of my bar end weights a snap. With the spacers, the fact that I had Heli-Bars, and a Vista Cruise, was not a problem; I just installed appropriate spacers until the bar weights just kissed the grips. Sweet. The grips each have a two-conductor wire, looking like black lamp cord, coming off the inboard end. These are wired to ground, and to 12V via a resistor (for low heat) and switch. Of course you'd want to use a 'switched' 12V source; otherwise, you could inadvertently leave the grips on and drain your battery (at 15W max, it would take a while, though). There is an optional rotary control which gives infinite control over the heat, and loses the resistor. I recommend the rotary control, as I have never found a great place to locate the resistor, and like the idea of less wiring. The instructions (which were clear and understandable, giving reasons why you should or should not do various steps) mentioned an optional Radio Shack LED, and, not wanting to leave a farkel unfarkeled, I installed it. Starts out moderately bright, ramps up to real bright, possibly too bright at night. We'll see. After installation, I started the bike, turned the dial, and within seconds felt heat at the grips. Unlike the tape-style heaters, which lose left side heat to the bar, the Hot Grips heated evenly. And, cranked up all the way, they put out LOTS of heat in a short amount of time. I'm awarding Hot Grips my 5-wheelie award for a fine product, great instructions, and great service (called them Tuesday afternoon; John at Hot Grips said, "I think I can still get these out today; they should be there on Thursday". He did, they were. The basic set is $90 delivered. I paid $137 with the rotary control and 2-day shipping. I recommend buying direct, not from a parts house, because the factory knows exactly what you need for the ST. Unless you live in Hawaii or Singapore, or only ride on sunny Sunday afternoons, you should have these on your bike. Start dropping Christmas hints now. http://www.hotgrips.com |
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