65 or 90 Watt Heated Jacket?

[RockBottom]

I'm going to break down this year and get a First Gear heated jacket. I already have their gloves and controller, so it makes more sense to go that way than Gerbing.

 

I wire the controller directly into the battery of my R12R. My question is whether the 90 watt plus gloves would pull too much. Any ideas? Thanks.

[DiggerJim]

My question is whether the 90 watt plus gloves would pull too much. Any ideas? Thanks.

Prolly not. I have a 90 watt WarmnSafe jacket & Gerbings gloves (old style) which I think are 30 watts for both. Works fine & no problems. (on an RT but the electrics are the same)

[elkroeger]

As stated, prolly not. I forget what the numbers are, but your bike's likely to put out about 700W. And it prolly takes 250W just to run itself. So you ought to have 450 left over for toys. That ought to be plenty for most anyone. If it were me, I'd go with the higher wattage and a heat controller.

 

But as usual, it depends: If you go and add up your accessory lights, jacket, pants, gloves and that 12V toaster oven, you're likely to get an answer that is under the "limit" of your alternator. That's fine for day-long rides at highway speeds. But that limit changes depending on how you ride. For example, I commute about 10 miles each way, all winter long. That's not a lot of time to fully recover the electrons spent just starting the engine. Especially with all that extra junk turned on. And I don't do much recreational riding in the winter, either. The heated jacket, grips, 100 Watt driving lights, combined with the cold of winter and the short trips... all that adds up to a weak battery sooner or later. I find I need to get out the charger mid winter and top it up now and then.

 

Another confounding factor is that your alternator doesn't put out 700 Watts at idle. It might drop by 1/2. So sitting at a light, you might only have a spare 100 Watts, or so. Look at it that way, and a 90W jacket turns out to be quite a lot. Something I do to better manage my electrons is turn off some or all of that stuff as I get closer to my destination. I use the freeway on my commute, so my general rule of thumb is turn it all off when I get off the interstate, and any time I'm in stop and go traffic.

 

 

[moshe_levy]

Rock-

 

Not to put down your choice as I have a W&S liner myself (W&S manufactures Firstgear's heated line) but there is no reason you can't "mix and match" your gear and controller. They all (with rare exception) work with the same coax connectors. I use an EXO controller with W&S liner and Gerbing's gloves - my favorites of the various categories. No issues whatsoever.

 

I tested the W&S 90W as part of my winter gear test for MCN last year, so if you want to see the unpublished lab results of how hot it gets and how fast it gets there, go here http://www.mklsportster.com/Articles/mcnheatedgearraw.pdf

 

To your first question, no, your R12R isn't going to have any issues powering this gear and heaps of other accessories together.

 

-MKL

[RockBottom]

Wow! Outstanding analysis.

[RockBottom]

As stated, prolly not. I forget what the numbers are, but your bike's likely to put out about 700W. And it prolly takes 250W just to run itself. So you ought to have 450 left over for toys. That ought to be plenty for most anyone. If it were me, I'd go with the higher wattage and a heat controller.

 

But as usual, it depends: If you go and add up your accessory lights, jacket, pants, gloves and that 12V toaster oven, you're likely to get an answer that is under the "limit" of your alternator. That's fine for day-long rides at highway speeds. But that limit changes depending on how you ride. For example, I commute about 10 miles each way, all winter long. That's not a lot of time to fully recover the electrons spent just starting the engine. Especially with all that extra junk turned on. And I don't do much recreational riding in the winter, either. The heated jacket, grips, 100 Watt driving lights, combined with the cold of winter and the short trips... all that adds up to a weak battery sooner or later. I find I need to get out the charger mid winter and top it up now and then.

 

Another confounding factor is that your alternator doesn't put out 700 Watts at idle. It might drop by 1/2. So sitting at a light, you might only have a spare 100 Watts, or so. Look at it that way, and a 90W jacket turns out to be quite a lot. Something I do to better manage my electrons is turn off some or all of that stuff as I get closer to my destination. I use the freeway on my commute, so my general rule of thumb is turn it all off when I get off the interstate, and any time I'm in stop and go traffic.

 

 

I think I'm OK because I won't be running anything other than the heated jacket/gloves and grips, and then on longer weekend rides. I "telecommute" so only go to the office a couple of days a week. And I always use a Battery Tender between rides.

[moshe_levy]

Wow! Outstanding analysis.

 

Thanks. I was proud of all the work that went into that test. Goes to show motojournalists work for less than minimum wage! It's a labor of love. Got a bad cold doing all that cold weather testing too!

 

-MKL

[RockBottom]

I did decide to go ahead and order the 90 watt First Gear jacket (I've discovered I can sneak new moto gear past my wife by paying with AmEx rewards points!) but keep my First Gear controller. It's not ugly enough to warrant replacing it. I take it off in March anyway. And I've found that I don't really need to know what exact setting it's on. If I'm cold, I spin the knob a bit one way. If I'm hot, I spin it the other way.

[moshe_levy]

Enjoy it.

 

-MKL

[Plasterman]

Only thing nice about Gerbing,there jacket now has the micro wire.

 

Tom

 

 

[moshe_levy]

Micro wire is nice. So is EXO's Fabrock which draws half as much current and heats to higher temps in a shorter amount of time. The W&S / FG wire is old school thicker wiring, for sure. Makes up for it by having a logical, integrated wiring arrangement, which is why it's my favorite. Much of this is subjective, of course. Others live Gerbing's PDU. To each his own.

 

All of these liners and gloves are pretty good - no collosal difference in feel or heat or durability. The collosal difference in performance and ergonomics is in the controllers where for some reason people Gerbing's and W&S are offering 1960s technology in a package that isn't easy or attractive to mount to motorcycles. There are better units available, for less money to boot. They definitely need to catch up in that regard.

 

-MKL

[moshe_levy]

That should have been "Others LOVE Gerbing's PDU..." Sorry for all the errors - new baby means I haven't slept in days!!

 

-MKL

[Peter Parts]

Just crying in the dark if you don't have a ground strap ammeter to tell when juice is entering or leaving battery. See URL below.

 

Easy to mock-up a 90 watt load using an 8-ohm resistor. BTW, the resistor has to handle 90 watts for whatever length of the trial.... duh.

 

8 one-ohm, 10 watt resistors in series, for example, Or 10 80-ohm 9 watt resistors in parallel, etc. Folks who test audio amps have lotsa high power 8-ohm resistors sitting around. But using a bulb is tricky.

 

Ben

 

 

[RockBottom]

Just crying in the dark if you don't have a ground strap ammeter to tell when juice is entering or leaving battery. See URL below.

 

Easy to mock-up a 90 watt load using an 8-ohm resistor. BTW, the resistor has to handle 90 watts for whatever length of the trial.... duh.

 

8 one-ohm, 10 watt resistors in series, for example, Or 10 80-ohm 9 watt resistors in parallel, etc. Folks who test audio amps have lotsa high power 8-ohm resistors sitting around. But using a bulb is tricky.

 

Ben

 

 

I'm a political scientist!!

[moshe_levy]

Yes. All of this mock-up testing is fine if you feel you're running near the limit of alternator capacity and have the time and inclination to start creating a research project for yourself. But here we're talking about a 90w liner and some 15W gloves on an alt with some 700W capacity, the vast majority of which (some 450W) is unused. You are nowhere close to maxing out, so there is really no need to go further with the analysis.

 

-MKL

[tallman]

840 on the GT

Regularly run 2 Gerbings full jacket liners, 2 Gerbings gloves, heated seat, aux driving lights, GPS etc.

 

[RockBottom]

Maybe next year Gerbing will introduce a nuclear model and I won't have to worry about it.

[Peter Parts]

Yes. All of this mock-up testing is fine if you feel you're running near the limit of alternator capacity and have the time and inclination to start creating a research project for yourself. But here we're talking about a 90w liner and some 15W gloves on an alt with some 700W capacity, the vast majority of which (some 450W) is unused. You are nowhere close to maxing out, so there is really no need to go further with the analysis.

 

-MKL

 

 

With all do respect, and noting your many distinguished research efforts, for bikers, there is some minimum level of personal commitment to understanding a bike that constitutes serious biking (versus passive consumer of big boy toys).

 

If you actually looked at my write-up, you'd see you can SIMPLY snap a DVM across the ground strap and see if juice is running into or out of the battery at a idle, 3500 rpm and 4500 rpm using different ordinary loads (like stepping on the brake pedal, etc.

 

Is that a "research project" or even one a "political scientist" can't handle?

 

Ben

[Peter Parts]

.... and this issue has nothing to do with max capacity or even typical riding. The issue is loss of battery power in winter riding conditions (cold batteries, long cranking, long periods off the road, slow riding, city use, low light conditions.....).

 

Yes, worth a few minutes of testing to eyeball the behavior of your charging system. Although charging hasn't been much of an issue since the Airhead bikes (but not /2 and previous), still a serious rider should have a grasp of how their bike handles it.

 

Ben