Put some Hot Grips™ on today and that was fun. I bought the new Premium Touring Hot grips from Oxford.
I used some fine paper to remove all glue and crap off the left bar and throttle tube, not that there was much as last time I put some grips on I used hairspray (totally recommend it), but the clutch side didn't want to go on.
On closer inspection it looks like the bar end weight connection within the handle bar has been welded in and the welds just raised enough to be a huge pain with the very inflexible interior of the grip. I had to lube up the grip inside and put some effort into it bearing in mind this isn't your usual run of the mill grip. It went on and I don't need any glue as it's going nowhere now.
The throttle side was, at first, easier but once it went on half way it was a bugger. i removed it and got the old hairspray out to first act as lube and then, once set, a tacky bond. For a few mins I thought I was going to have to ride around with the throttle grip only on the throttle tube half way but perseverance, and brute force, got it on. unfortunately there is a little lip, around the circumference of the throttle tube, about 5 mill from the point where the tube goes into the throttle cable housing. That is as far as I can get the grip. It's a minor annoyance that I can live with.
Routing the cables was easy enough, and when I tested them on the drive there was heat \o/.
A bit of electrical tape around all the connectors and I went for a test ride.
The settings are 30%, 40%, 50% 75% and 100%.
Everything I have read about heated grips suggests 100% is great to get them warmed up quicker but not a good riding around setting. That was certainly correct for today. 50% was too hot as was 40%. I set it to 30% and that, for today which isn't the coldest it's been this side of summer, was only slightly too warm.
One thing I discovered was the bracket the control goes on, which attaches to my clutch lever bracket, is angles too flat so tomorrow at work I shall get one of the engineers to angle it better for me, so I can actually see what setting it's on, and remove the lower bolt hole as the gap between the 2 bolt holes does not match the distance between the 2 bolts on the clutch lever bracket. I would do it myself but I'll just bugger it up and I don't have the correct tool to do the job.
In conclusion, I can tell they'll be great for when it's really cold but unfortunately, today isn't cold enough for a proper test as when I turned round and headed home, I turned the grips off. I didn't need the heat.
I also tested the "Hey stupid I'll turn the grips off for you eh?" feature and that works perfectly. No need to worry about wiring them into the ignition or anything.
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