Heated Grips

 Back in the Autumn of 2015, I had a ride of Matts BMW S1000rr which had heated grips as standard. The day wasn't particularly cold but the heaters on the low setting felt most welcome so I decided that I should look into a pair of these.

  Whilst at the Motorbike Live show at the NEC a month later Col and I came across the Oxford stand and spoke with the salesman who told us all about them. A few stands away was a company selling them at a discount, so we bought 2 sets, saving £20 each. These were the new Oxford Hot Grips for sports bikes. 

Fitting them

 The following weekend I went to Cols and we started to remove the old handle grips and bar ends. Well I did. Col couldn't undo the bolt  to get his bar end off on the throttle side and gave up after 20 minutes of muttering and throwing of spanners.
 So I continued to fit mine. In all it took less than an hour, the hardest part was removing the old rubber grips.
The Oxford Hot Grips come with a neat looking, rain proof control unit that mounts to the handle bar, the grips and all the electrical bits you need to connect it up.
It draws less than 4amps so is not a huge draw on the battery. The control unilt has a battery guard system, it detects if you forget to switch them off and automatically does it for you after a few minutes if the engine is not running.

Riding with them

  The first thing you notice is the bars feel a fraction thicker to hold and the rubber is harder.
The buttons used to set the temperature are easy to see and get at giving you the choice of 5 heat settings. The lowest is 30%, 40%, 50%, 75% and full power at 100%. I have never used more than 50% as that is quite hot with my favourite summer gloves on even on cold slightly frosty days. The grip gets noticeably warmer after just a couple of minutes. 
 When your hands are warm the rest of you seems to also be warm, it seems that the warmed blood in your hands must carry some of the heat round your body with it as I do feel warmer than when its switched off but that could be my imagination!
  There is no negative that i have found over the last 6 months using them, but if i had to offer something it would be that the control unit was slightly narrower, such as if you look at the picture above it was only half as wide as it is.

 The fact is though that when Col stops and grips his exhaust pipe to warm his hands when the mornings are in single figures, my hands are toastie..!



4/5