Originally Posted by
Danno
I was at Motomarket this past Saturday and learned a few things. They've got some Gerbings and First Gear in stock, but the newer "G3" Gerbings gear has not arrived yet. I have not yet found out the difference, but it's possibly more than marketing crap and may be a better technology worth seeking out. IOW, MM has last year's Gerbings products. The upside is you can see how they fit and feel.
Gloves: you can get a liner for your current gloves from Gerbings ( just under $100, can't recall exact price but cheaper than full glove) or a full glove from Gerbings, First Gear, Tourmaster and other companies. To me, the Gerbings full glove felt a bit awkward - spider long fingers with tight palm. The First Gear glove felt better, both are in the $150 range.
Gerbings has a lifetime guarantee on their electrics, so theoretically you can send them back and they'll fix or replace. In practice, this could take a while and you'd lose riding time. Most people don't test their heated gear in the summer. I was told that Gerbings is the only manufacturer to offer this service. Not sure if that's the case, but haven't seen anyone else making this offer.
Once you decide on gloves or liner for your gloves, you need to plug 'em in. Simplest/cheapest way is to get a Y harness to put inside your riding jacket sleeves and plug that into a power adapter for your bike. You can do a direct battery fused SAE style connector or a lighter adapter.
If you don't want to run on full toast all the time, you'll need a switch. Switches usually offer hi/lo/off, but the downside is they use a resistor so you're not saving wattage on the low setting.
Then there's a variable heat adjuster, usually called a temp troller (short for controller I suppose). Modern controllers use a variable pulse width, which cycles your heating elements on and off at least once a second. It's much more efficient than a variable resistor, but keep in mind that while you can set and forget the temperature of the glove, it's not a thermostat and will not compensate for the outside air temperature changing. IOW, the setting that worked in the morning may change as the day warms up.
These temp-trollers are about $60 and up for single, $90 and up for dual. The styles are "floating", like in your pocket or strapped/velcroed to the outside of your jacket or leg, and "installed", which you'd place somewhere on your dash.
Someone in the store advised me to not make the mistake he did and go for the dual troller the first time around. Makes sense, for $30 more you can control gloves and a jacket.
There are jackets, jacket liners and vests. The jacket liner seems to be the sweet spot, where you use whatever jacket you've already got over it and the liner is pre-wired through the sleeves for your gloves. There's a junction box located where you'd find an inside pocket, and you can wire up your dual-troller and slip it in your jacket pocket, power goes to liner from your adapter under the seat.
I suggest taking a trip to MM to take a look. It all makes a lot more sense when you play with the stuff.
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) and they'll help you get fitted up.
