Getting ready for Winter with Gerbing this year

[CrashGordon]

I routinely ride down into the upper 40's with just the liner in my jacket and a pair of insulated gauntlets. It's only a twenty minute ride into work for me, but that's at 70mph on the freeway. Honestly, I could ride for hours like that. If it gets colder than that, I swap out my regular gear for an insulated suit by FirstGear. I can easily ride into the 20's and 30's with it. I cannot wear that suit if it's warmer than 50 degrees because it is way too hot.

Of course, I've never used heated gear so it is entirely possible that it is really great and I just don't know it. Here in Texas I just can't justify it, though.

[ZG]

The only downside to wearing heated gear is that it can and occasionally will fail and depending on how you are dressed, it might make it impossible to continue. I got stuck once in mid- 20F weather when the connector on the heated gear controller failed; we were about 40 miles from home and I could not ride that far without heated clothing as I was otherwise dressed pretty lightly. I actually stopped at a local Radio Shack, bought a connector and a roll of electrical tape, borrowed a knife and re-wired the end of the controller in the store. It was ugly but worked well until I could replace it with a <real> connector. I would suggest you dress a little heavier than you absolutely have to if you are counting on heated clothing and have any appreciable distance to cover, especially if traveling at high speed on the highway.

Brian

 
 

 

[wally_games]

I routinely ride down into the upper 40's with just the liner in my jacket and a pair of insulated gauntlets. It's only a twenty minute ride into work for me, but that's at 70mph on the freeway. Honestly, I could ride for hours like that. If it gets colder than that, I swap out my regular gear for an insulated suit by FirstGear. I can easily ride into the 20's and 30's with it. I cannot wear that suit if it's warmer than 50 degrees because it is way too hot.

Of course, I've never used heated gear so it is entirely possible that it is really great and I just don't know it. Here in Texas I just can't justify it, though.

I'm in Texas too, but I normally try to do my riding between 45 and 100 degrees F, although I have pushed both ends by as much as 10 degrees. This past summer almost all of my riding took place before 11:00 a.m.

I would like to have a heated vest though. Might be able to get a few more weeks of riding.

[jayke]

Don't bother with a vest.  Buy a liner instead.  Warm torso, cold arms = no fun.

[jimmymac]

Don't bother with a vest.  Buy a liner instead.  Warm torso, cold arms = no fun.

My Wife has a vest and loves it...

[B.D.F.]

Yeah, she is- thanks.

There is more to that story: we ended up getting stuck that night and had to call a flat- bed to tow the bike home. You should have seen the look on the truck driver's face, especially when I asked him if he was going to pick up the other stuck bike too :-)  :-)  . It turned out that I was trying to draw far too much current through the main fuse (my fault, not the bike's) and it opened on that ride because we were using the heated clothes near and sometimes at, 100% output. I was drawing close to 50 amps through a 30 amp fuse. That is why I mentioned wearing heavier clothing than you absolutely need when using heated clothes.... if the heat does not work, the clothes themselves have to keep you from freezing to death. We were not dressed for that and the wait for the tow was pretty long and cold although I did give Andrea a few minutes of heat from the bike's battery.

Brian

Your wife is a real trooper to ride, let alone in 11F weather.  Hat's off to her.

[roadie]

Brian, that musta been terrible and lesson learned for me for sure. So now do you always use a 50 amp fuse? Or running a separate controller and circuit for Andrea?

[Stasch]

I use an older 77w Gerbing jacket liner (non-micro wire) and set of 25w Gerbing ATV gloves.  I can ride indefinitely down to freezing.  Don't know about colder than that because of fears of ice when below freezing.  Have been out in 28F for a couple hours and did fine.

Dual controller was a must.  Gloves wouldn't get hot enough on a single.  When gloves warm enough, jacket roasting.

Heated gear has been the best motorcycle accessory I've ever purchased by far.

[B.D.F.]

No, still using a 30 amp fuse, just re-wired my gear to spread the load around a little bit.

I had wired all of our heated gear directly to the battery, which might have been OK but certainly a full load on that fuse. But I also powered the new headlights (HIDs) directly from the battery too. The main fuse in the bike, the one that is hiding behind the battery, is in the circuit between the battery and the rest of the bike other than the starter motor. So once the bike was running I was drawing all the current for all heated clothing and the headlights (somewhere around 31 amps) as well as whatever current the battery was using to charge from the alternator (guessing 5 to 10 amps) through that 30 amp fuse. No wonder it popped. What I did was to remove the whip for Andrea's heated clothes from the battery side and put it on the alternator side, which is the other side of the fuse. The bike still has to power everything from the alternator of course but the power to run her heated gear no longer passes through that fuse.

We have always had out own heated gear controllers but now they have different sources for power from the bike.

By the way, the only thing left on the bike that worked after the main fused opened was.... the heated gear. 

This is what the bike looks like with an open main fuse....



Brian

Bian, that musta been terrible and lesson learned for me for sure. So now do you always use a 50 amp fuse? Or running a separate controller and circuit for Andrea?

[martin_14]

This is what the bike looks like with an open main fuse...

It's not that bad, if it wasn't for the bazooka. Did you get rid of it?

[Jim M.]

I got my Gerbing's jacket liner 3 years ago. I spent the whole first winter walking around kicking my own butt for not doing this earlier!

[jayke]

Solve one problem walk into another........

If you ride in colder weather, your faceshield fogs up.  You might also want to think about anti-fog treaments or some other way to be fog free. I bought a pinlock visor for my RF-1100.

[redbarber]

If a pinlock is available for your helmet, definitely go for it.  If not, I had pretty good luck with a universal stick-on from Fog-City.  Of course you'll want to buy a second visor for your helmet, so you can take the Fog-City visor off in the spring, but it works pretty well at controlling visor fog.  (Doesn't help with your glasses though.)
Love my Gerbing liner, and my First Gear gloves.  Ride year round now, only stop for heavy precip, regardless of the temp.

[roadie]

i've blown my farkle budget for the month.  glad Nov is right around the corner.