Friday, January 18, 2013

Coming to Grips

The mailman delivered my new Poly Heaters grips today so even though it was 10F in the garage I knew I needed to put in some time.

Outside grip Poly Heaters are nice because they're easy to install, slide 'em over the bar, drill a 1/8" hole, install a screw and you're done. If they need to come back off its no big deal, especially if you spray the bar with something like WD-40. Normally WD-40 is something to avoid, its not a lubricant although most people use it for that purpose. In this case it makes a nice water seal between the bars and the grips and it dries to a film that sticks around and resists rust a little.

I had to spend a little time on the throttle side because at full throttle the grip would grab the thumb throttle a little and hold it wide open, obviously not something I want to encounter on the trail! A few seconds with the drum sander in my rotary tool plus installing the throttle side grip a little farther out cleared up the interference issue and I got both grips installed.
I routed the wiring for the heaters down the bars with a couple zip ties and found there was already a hole drilled to install the switch near the keyswitch.
Here you can see the switch for the heaters installed between the keyswitch and the choke control. Its not wired up all the way yet, I wired from the heaters to the switch but I still need to figure out where my ground is coming from and where I'm going to pick up power. Theres a wire tapped out of the voltage regulator already which I suspect will provide ground and ground shouldn't be too hard to come up with. Before I do anything else though I need to get a fuse to install between the switch and the power lead. There aren't really any fuses on this sled at all as it has such a simple electrical system and I don't want a shorted heater to burn my sled down...


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