heated grip wiring

[BadBatzMaru]

just got my heated grips from dual-star and started puttin 'em on... for anybody that did this mod, which power source did you splice into?? the headlight seems an obvious choice, but I'm thinkin that I'd like to upgrade to a 80W piaa lamp and then with heaters (35W) that might be too much for the headlight wire to handle. I'd feel best just running another line straight from the battery with an inline fuse, but I'm sure that they'd get left on and drain my battery.
any sugeestions??

[Briliu]

i dont know what to hook it up to, but on snowmobiles the heated grips can never be "left on" it doesnt matter where the switch is, once the power is off they dont draw current.

I dont know what makes them do that, just letting you know you should probably look into that as to not be left with warm hands and sore feet  :mrgreen:

If you figure out what the snowmobiles do for that, it would probably lead itself into how they wire them up on there. They have headlights too, but i dont know so, sorry.

[mjm]

just got my heated grips from dual-star and started puttin 'em on... for anybody that did this mod, which power source did you splice into?? the headlight seems an obvious choice, but I'm thinkin that I'd like to upgrade to a 80W piaa lamp and then with heaters (35W) that might be too much for the headlight wire to handle. I'd feel best just running another line straight from the battery with an inline fuse, but I'm sure that they'd get left on and drain my battery.
any sugeestions??

I had the same concerns when I installed heated grips last year.  

What I did was go to the local autoparts store and buy a standard driving light relay.  Then I supplied power to the relay (through a fuse) and to a double pole double throw switch (so I could select high or low filiments in the grips) to the grips then back from the grips to the other (ground) leg of the relay.  

The relay control circut is wired off the unused connector in the headlamp shell - this connector is only hot when the ignition is on.  If the ignition is off the relay is "open" and I can forget to turn the grips off without draining the battery.  

Ended up with more wires than you might believe running back and forth - (make sure that you buy several colors of wire so you can keep track of which lead goes where - it can be real depressing when you have a bad connection and realize you have five red wires running parallel and you lose track of which is which when trying to trace it where its zip-tied to the frame) but I needed a place to mount the relay and it fit fine using velcro tape under the side panel on the left side.  I put the switch through a slightly enlarged bolthole in the mounting tab for the airbox on the right side of the frame - I can reach under my leg and flip the switch with heavy gloves on. (I have pod filters).  All the connections for the grips to the power lead are inside the headlight shell - I used crimp-on connectors and covered the "crimp" with shrink tubing.

If I were doing this again, I might put the switch on the bars and put an ignition cut-out wher I put this switch as an anti-theft device.   I have the 80W PIAA bulb and do not seem to have any trouble with the battery holding a charge while running the heated grips.

[BadBatzMaru]

What I did was go to the local autoparts store and buy a standard driving light relay.  Then I supplied power to the relay (through a fuse) and to a double pole double throw switch (so I could select high or low filiments in the grips) to the grips then back from the grips to the other (ground) leg of the relay.  

Thanks! That's exactly what I'll do.  

The relay control circut is wired off the unused connector in the headlamp shell - this connector is only hot when the ignition is on.

So thats what those wires are for! I thought my PO had to rewire something and left those unconnected ...errrr sumthin... I was gonna start probing around with the multimeter, but you just saved me the effort.  

Thank you