Seen a few DIY's on the internet about making your on heated clothing. tha basic concept is to run the correct gauge and lenght of wire along some sort of under garment such as a jacket liner. This all seems very intersting but I'm wondering about the possibility of some sort of shocking the living crap out of myself in the rain or other moisture. oh btw here is a link to one of the sort of articles i'm referring too

http://www.shadowriders.org/faq/electricvests.html

Unless your an electrical engineer steer clear. You'll either electricute yourself, melt your clothes, set your clothes on fire or not work at all and waste shed loads of cash. Much cheaper to buy.

Yea right ... you're going to electrocute yourself with 12 volt DC ... clown. What next, commit a murder with a flashlight ... sheesh.

DC in wire only makes heat ... worst case you burn up the jacket and then yourself. No worries, it takes a good 10-20 mins, and if you have no air flow it wont burn anyway.

Cool.
Buddha.

Im not neccesarily talking about when its completed but your talking about a guy who i guess has no electrical experience what so ever hes guna end up shocking himself trying to make an electric jacket.

"How" is still my question.
Burn yourself on the soldering Iron maybe ... or on the wiring if you create a short ...
Battery has DC only ... You make it and fiddle with the wiring etc, the bike will be not running so your battery is all you got, you will prolly run it low, yea maybe ... You need AC to be electrocuted, 12V aint gonna do much other than throw off a few good sparks and singe stuff around it.
Cool.
Buddha.

Nice link, thanks.   

Several guys over on the adventure riders site have made their own vest, rather cheaply too I might add. Some of them even pieced together or built a kit to give them a pwm controller for the vest. They seem to like it well enough. One guy even took a heated seat cushion from W-Mart and modded it to use as a heated vest. I was able to find my widder vest used and then just recently got a bi-metal controller for it. It's not as hot nor does it heat up as quickly as the other ones, but it doesn't take as much power either.
Tony

Why the hell would you want heated clothing

Quote from: bubba zanetti on October 29, 2008, 12:46:08 PM
Why the hell would you want heated clothing

It's for winter riding outside of Australia! 

Winter here is usually from high 30's down to mid 20's and I've never found the need heated clothing. Now heated grips are another thing, I'd never ride in winter with out them ever again.

12v dc is nothing, i've been hit by 120 more times than i have fingers, and 220 a couple of times, 12v is a joke. the battery would run out of juice before you'd die, unless it was a yellow top (joke). My dad made his own heated jacket and it works great.

So anyone who has done this have any tips on how to do this. i was thinking about how to add in some sort of thermostat such as some electric blankets have

I've seen that article before. I priced out the components a couple of years ago, and for about $50 you can get enough wire and connections for 2 jacket liners. I was thinking about doing the liner on my jacket. You can get controllers and connectors from Widder or Gerbing (I don't remember which one sells them separately).

You can build a heat controller as well.  The Gerbing heat controller is simply a duty cycle modulator.  You can build the same thing with a 555 timer circuit and a couple of power transistors.  Set the pulse timing constant and adjust the pulse length with a potentiometer.   

Quote from: GeeP on October 30, 2008, 08:40:23 AM
You can build a heat controller as well.  The Gerbing heat controller is simply a duty cycle modulator.  You can build the same thing with a 555 timer circuit and a couple of power transistors.  Set the pulse timing constant and adjust the pulse length with a potentiometer.   

For more details on TonyKZ1/GeeP's idea, search the ADVrider forums (http://www.advrider.com)

In particular, this thread shows a schematic for a controller (scroll to posts 39/40/41):
http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113134&highlight=heated+vest+controller

If you don't want to build one yourself, the same thread has some discussion on purchasing pre-built units.


edit: sorry, it seems like TonyKZ1 also mentioned this info in his post above

Quote from: GeeP on October 30, 2008, 08:40:23 AM
You can build a heat controller as well.  The Gerbing heat controller is simply a duty cycle modulator.  You can build the same thing with a 555 timer circuit and a couple of power transistors.  Set the pulse timing constant and adjust the pulse length with a potentiometer.   

Seems similar to an intermittent windshield wiper control.

Quote from: bubba zanetti on October 29, 2008, 02:29:07 PM
Winter here is usually from high 30's down to mid 20's and I've never found the need heated clothing. Now heated grips are another thing, I'd never ride in winter with out them ever again.

I totally agree.  Heated grips and a pair of thermal underwear under your riding clothes - warm and without any of the bulk of big puffy winter gear/gloves.

Well I made the thing and gave it its first test ride last nigreguht, and it worked pretty good. It may not work quite as well as a  regular retail unit; I don't know as I have never been able to  try one of the expensive units but it works more than well enough for my purposes. Especially consisering it cost next to nothing. Its wired a little ugly as of now b/c the wires are simply twisted and electrical taped together. I'm going to properly solder and heat shrink them together now that the experimenting is done. next I believe I'm going to make some heated gloves and pants next. Oh and btw I'm no electrical engineer but I never said I had no electrical experience.

Quote from: The Buddha on October 29, 2008, 11:57:36 AM
What next, commit a murder with a flashlight ... sheesh.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352916,00.html
http://www.unsolvedmurders.ca/wg_article2.htm

Sorry, couldn't resist.