My hands get cold riding in the winter months.

In my neck of the woods, it's fairly common for high temps to be in 30s and 40s and subfreezing night time temps. I've found that some of the best riding conditions are earlier in the day before the mud has had a chance to thaw. Real grippy stuff when it's frozen hard like that. Hurts to go down on though...

Anyway, I have good riding gear to keep everything warm - except hands and fingers. Even the warmest of gloves are no match for a couple hours riding at any kind of speed. The wife surprised me with some Tusk lock on heated grips for Christmas and I just got then installed this weekend.

The grips themselves appear to be decent quality as is the wiring and connectors. Install took about 4 hrs to complete. That included some soldering of the red power wire to a real ring terminal fitting, removal of plastics and seat to route wiring, install of the on/off button on the bars, along with install of the actual grips and tucking/zip-tying wire. No real issues were encountered and it was a fairly straightforward affair. I chose to wire directly to the battery as I didn't want to potentially overload any of the existing wires with this add-on. There's an inline fuse already with the grips wiring. I may ultimately solder in a on/off switch between the battery and the controller on the bars but I don't have one as it is today.

The grips work perfectly well. On "high" setting, with the bike idling, the grips reached 105'F after about 10min (verified with a digital laser thermometer) and temperature was still climbing. No idea (yet) exactly how warm they'll get at stand-still but I'm confident they'll perform very well for my intended purpose.

The specs state these will draw about 3 amps on the max setting. I have a voltage indicator on my USB charger and, at idle, I was seeing 14.0 volts even after 10min idling so my bike had plenty of excess electrical output to power them. But I've changed my headlight, tail light, and turn signals to LED already so a stock bike *may not* have the beans to run them with incandescent bulbs.
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I'm planning to get out for a 20 mile jaunt this week, will report back on the performance of the grips later.

Hoping this review/report helps someone else eventually. I'll put up some pictures in the next couple of days.

 

Some pics.

 

Thanks for posting the information Might like those on the street bike.

 

Do these limit your selection of grips that you can run in the future? Or can you still slide any old grips over these, like regular Pro Taper pillow tops or what have you.

 

These particular heated grips are just that - grips. The heater is directly integrated into the grip itself. In other words, removing these grips removes the heater also.

I think Tusk makes some stick-on heaters that would affix to the handlebars, and then the grips would go over the top. Thus, any grip could be installed. Kinda sounds like the solder joint isn't quite as reliable with that type relative to the bolt-on though. Something to be aware of.

 

Gotcha, thanks for the details

 

With rain forecast off and on the rest of the week, figured I better get out today if I was going to give the grips a test run.

It was just about freezing when I left the house. Headed for a spot about 5 miles from the house to play around in the frozen mud, and do some hill climbing. The wind up on top of the hill was blowing 15mph, give or take. It was brisk, no doubt. The torso and legs were fine with my riding gear on, face was numb (maybe I need a new helmet, appropriate for the cold months), but the hands were WARM! I rode 50mph roads to the riding area, and took slower roads on the way home. With the slower speeds, my hands were seriously getting too hot. I pulled the bike into the garage, grabbed my laser thermometer again, and measured 125'F on each side. Wow! I am very impressed with these.

 

Well, after 6 or so months of riding, the lock-on grip heaters failed. One or both of the wires on the throttle side pulled out from the connection down inside the grip. This happened on the last day of a 4-day 850 mile mostly dirt journey thru Idaho and Montana, which was a bummer cuz morning temps when we broke camp were in the 40s or 50s. I'll note that prior to the 850mi trip, I probably only had 6 or 7 full days riding with the grips. So I think they failed quite prematurely. I guess it figures though...made in China.

I contacted RMATVMC, and they reported that they no longer have these grips. Which is a 2nd bummer because I really really liked them. I'll have to find another option now -- I'm totally spoiled with grips heaters now for those chilly mornings/days riding! Knowing now what I do, I would probably squirt some caulk or maybe JB Weld down into the hole in the trip where the wires connect. Doing so would, I think, lock everything in place a bit better and probably prevent this kind of thing from happening.

I'll scour fleabay and see if I can find another set of these lock-on grips. If I come up empty, I'll strongly consider the Tusk heaters with the adhesive backed heating elements.

 

Oxford heated grips are very good