MCN Heated Gear Comparison Article

[moshe_levy]

All-

 

Not sure this is the right forum for this, but a few of you have written me offline asking questions about the heated gear comparo I wrote for April MCN, which is now hitting the shelves and your mailboxes. I got my copy a few days ago, and apparently due to length constraints they did not publish the results of my lab tests. To me, the lab tests were the main point of the story, and what made it more objective than the usual heated gear testing I read elsewhere. I worked pretty hard to collect that data and I don't want it to collect dust unseen.

 

So, to make the data I collected available to my readers, I have uploaded the entire unedited article with all data and pictures, as I submitted it to the magazine. I think it will paint a more complete picture than the published version. For anyone interested, you can find it here http://www.mklsportster.com/Articles/mcnheatedgearraw.pdf This is not a pretty document, but one which is I believe contains good, solid data for objective comparison of the garments.

 

If anyone has any thoughts on the piece, please feel free to let me know here.

 

-MKL

[Survived-til-now]

Moshe,

 

You submitted a 24-page article with no immediately obvious structure or summary - and you are disappointed they summarised it

 

 

[moshe_levy]

No, that's not quite how it worked. I put the raw text up there which is not structured, mainly to give readers a chance to see the lab data. It's not up there in a format suitable for publication - just strictly to show the lab data.

 

-MKL

[EddyQ]

Thanks Moshe. Love raw data ! Must be the engineer in me. . .

[skinny_tom (aka boney)]

I read the article yesterday and poked through your raw data today. While I'm typically a data type person, I think that the average motorcyclist wants something that gets warm and stays warm. Your notes on the connections and their details are great!

[Selden]

Thank you very much for doing this. Can you provide definitions for these terms in the data charts:

 

Max rising slope

Soak time 302-356F

Reflow time /361F

 

Does it seem odd to you that there is such a difference in peak temp between the left and right front temps on the EXO vest?

 

As a side note, looking at the EXO web site, they also have a lighter vest (basically the jacket liner without sleeves) that has a mandarin collar; if I were looking at a heated vest, I think it would be this one. Also cheaper ($169.95)

[RedMac]

Moshe,

Great article. I linked to it in to our riders group email distribution at work.

 

The only suggestion I would have is to specify which connector types are used by which jacket and controller. I had to dig pretty deep in your article to figure out that the EXO controller could be used with the Gerbing jacket (or any jacket that uses the same connectors as Gerbing).

 

Thanks much for sharing.. good stuff!

[moshe_levy]

Thanks for the input guys.

 

Selden, re those terms, the device I used to measure the heat was a thermal profile setup normally used at work (PCB contract manufacturing) to measure a PCB run through a reflow oven. The temp profiler measures the board's temp at specific points in order to make sure it's baked in accordance with component specifications - so in short, none of those terms apply here, since I certainly didn't soak or reflow this gear! Couldn't take that off the chart though, as it's a boilerplate graph.

 

Re differences in peak temp, the probes are very sensitive and that's a matter of movement or how the garment sits on an individual - in some cases, it was tighter in one area than the other, hence moving the probes closer to the heating elements and changing the reading in one area vs another. You can see little dips here and there in the glove readings, for example, if I just wiggled my finger a bit. It might sound easy, but keeping perfectly still for 15 minutes while baking with the gear on full blast in a room temp lab wasn't a cakewalk. (That's why, after all that effort, I wanted to show the data off). Again, though, this objective data is hardly the final word. It's just one measure - real world subjective feel is much more important.

 

Mike, they basically ALL use coax (what you call Gerbing's) these days. The only one that didn't was Aerostich, which used SAE. Even then, for $3 you can buy a coax to SAE adapter, or whatever.

 

I was most impressed with the EXO controller, and then W&S sent me a remote heat-troller - too late for the article, but that thing's damn nifty. I reported on that and sent it in - not sure when they'll print that.

 

-MKL

[Peter Parts]

Many thanks for great write-up. Always a painful question about upgrading older gear that works pretty well.

 

I was impressed that you gave so much prudent emphasis on usability.

 

BTW, I get along just fine with a simple (and cheap) switch, that you don't endorse. At least with my gear, the heating cycle is so long (and I need full heat almost all the time in the weather during which I use it) that the switch doesn't need attention too much.

 

Having no switch at all is a definite no-no because connectors are not designed to handle "live" connections. Switches have tungsten contacts that survive that kind of repeated sparking... esp. with low initial resistance heater loads.

 

Not part of your topic, but I never can resist DIY. There is a little DC power module like for powering model trains - goes by the name MX033 - that makes a swell controller. Around $25 and then you can configure it (big control knob?) as you see fit.