Heated Handgrips

[lhanscom]

Just thought I would pass this on. Yesterday I made some heated handgrips for my bike, they were simple to make, and work very well. I took thin gauge wire, not sure of the exact gauge, but think piano wire, and wrapped it around my grips tightly, then covered the grips with a layer of electrical tape to hold it in place. I'm not sure exactly how much wire I used, maybe 3 feet per grip. I did some tests to figure out how much to use by testing the temp of the grip and compared it to how many amps it used. I found 1.5 -2 amps, or about 20watts seems to work well, to acheive this I wired the grips together in series. Then put a thumb switch on it so I could turn the grips on and off easily. They work great, and cost next to nothing.

[Anonymous]

interesting. how did you heat the wire?

[lhanscom]

The electrical system, hook one end of the wire to the positive, in my case I ran the positive side thru the switch, then hook the other side to ground. The current heats the wire.

[mdole]

The electrical system, hook one end of the wire to the positive, in my case I ran the positive side thru the switch, then hook the other side to ground. The current heats the wire.

Normally heated grips use resistance wire that heats up due to the resistance when current passes through the wire.

[lhanscom]

Ok, what's the difference between 'resistence wire' and regular wire? All wire has resistance, and it all heats up when current is supplied.