This coming up weekend, Nov. 6th, 7th & 8th, we will be taking a 2 night road trip down to Tumwater, Washington to see the Gerbing headquarters and to trade in our old technology for their new micro-wire heated liners. I ran a poll a few weeks back and asked if you guys ride in the winter. I am amazed that the majority answered yes with NO HEATED gear.
Maybe we are getting soft in our aging process because to be honest I can not ride without heat when the temps drop below double digits Celsius.
Perfect example was today, 1 degree Celsius when I left my house for work at 0520 and got down to 6 on my way home. Just a turn of the dial and even a little heat makes for such an enjoyable ride home. We love our heated liner and gloves but that is just us. This is the best time of year for me to ride. Especially when the rains stay away.
So….since I still have my tracking subscription on my SPOT Connect I will be turning it on for this trip. We are going to finish off the Olympic Peninsula. There is a section that we still need to ride and will do it this time around since we did not over the weekend of October 3rd.
Oh, and there are other companies out there that make heated gear like:
Powerlet
Mobile Warming Gear
Tourmaster
First Gear
Warm & Safe
Tips about using heated gear:
Heated gear is worn as close to your body as you can without actually touching your skin. You can wear a vest or full liner. We prefer the full liner and heated gloves. Most companies sell glove liners too. All heated gear is meant to be worn under you riding suit. We presently own the KLIM Traverse suit that is made for the rider to come up with their own lining system. The suit does not come with an internal rain or thermal liner. The Traverse is waterproof on the outside, Gore Tex and Cheryl and I always use our Gerbing as both a liner with no heat and of course with the heat on. Also, one thing to point out is that we keep our lining slim, no bulk and real easy to do shoulder checks.
Keeping our core body temperature consistent allows us to focus more on riding rather than being cold and shivering. Being too cold can be very dangerous and so far with the set up we have we are able to comfortably ride in weather well below 0 Celsius. The coldest we both have been out has been -8 C but I think that will be the coldest we would ride. I like -5.
We also use a temperature control rather than an on/off switch. Our controller is permanent and built into our bikes. Here are a few pics of our set. Both our Beemers are set up the same exact way and Yep, Cheryl did the install. 🙂
We know people who use just an on/off switch and they find themselves having to keep turning the heat on and off all the time as their gear only has 2 temps. HIGH and off. By using a controller you can adjust the heat as you ride. Much easier to stay comfortable we feel. If we were to do it all over again we would add a dual temp controller, one for our gloves and liner.
Some companies sell heated pants, socks, insoles for boots, neck warmers, some use rechargeable batteries, wireless temperature controllers or like us, we are hard wired to our battery and plug in.
Most gear uses anywhere from 15 watts to over 100 watts depending how many items you are using at one time. Important to know what your bikes battery can handle.
It’s important that you research what cables you need and adapters. Not all gear comes ready to plug and ride. For example since we have a liner and gloves we need to make sure we bought a Y connector cable that runs from our jacket and attached to the two connectors on the liner and then plugs into the bike. Our gloves plug into sleeves. You need to find a set up that works for you.
So, that’s it. I actually started this post just be to an announcement about going to the Gerbing Headquarters and look what happened. This is typical as I am Italian and from New York….we talk a lot. Hope some of this info is helpful or useful and I will be taking some pics this weekend. Going to be trying out my new Panasonic T3 camera. Supposed to be waterproof. We shall see. 😉
Advgrrl Motorcycle Adventures & More 