I went to troubleshoot something I know nothing about, grip heaters, as the left grip doesn't heat up. Was told that it was shorted out or something of that nature. When I went to remove it, I found there was no heater under the grip and the wires taped off out of the way. My question is, I don't want to go through the effort of wiring up a whole new switch or take off the throttle grip to replace everything, so I'm wondering if these things are pretty universal. Can I just solder in a replacement heater?
The Oxford HotGrips which I have installed have individual heater tubes with a wire lead that connects to the harness from the temperature controller. Certainly would be easy to replace just one.
Hmm - plus and minus here. The short answer is yes your idea would probably work. BUT personally I would bite the bullet and replace the whole kit - especially if the current kit is more than a year or two old. Aftermarket heated grip kits tend to fail with little or no warning - especially cheap Chinese tat. If the left grip has already shorted out, the right one may also fail, as the cabling to it is subject to the additional twisting stress of rotation of the throttle. Typically aftermarket heated grips come as a pre-wired (reasonably water tight) set, with power from a single battery take off controlled by some sort of handlebar mounted switch. So if one grip is still working it suggests the battery take off and switch is still serviceable, so assuming you can locate where the feed to the defective grip was disconnected you could splice in there a feed to a new grip. With soldered joints and heat shrink you should be able to make a reasonably water tight join which should work for a while. Downside is to save 20 minutes hassle to swap out the whole kit - you will presumably have to cut up a perfectly serviceable (brand new?) heated grip kit which will presumably invalidate their warranty + introduce a potential point of weakness at that join, for a future failure, due to either water ingress or typical vibration and cable movement associated with stuff attached to the handlebars. SkiMad
That is the best type of answer; the best advice scenario, the best advice on desired scenario if different, the pros and cons of it, and possible reasons why problem happened in the first place . I can't recall perfectly at the moment, but pretty certain that there was a single lead going to the toggle switch, with and dual leads leaving (one to each heater) and the ground lead of those both going to the frame. I think it's funny that the previous owner (who is not mechanically inclined and it was his first bike) said that he bought it off a mechanic. This mechanic is the guy who supposedly cut the wires at the heater and taped them off. But he cut the two leads at the same length, with exposed conductor, and taped them together.
Hmm .. mechanic? I wonder what sort? Makes me wonder how come heated grips which presumably they fitted to the motorbike were defective? An occasional reason why heated grips end up faulty, arises during installation by someone who does not bother to read the fitting instructions, and jumps straight in. Sadly a typical car mechanic might not realise that the diameter of standard grips fitted to many motorbikes is slightly different. So if you attempt to install the smaller grip onto the larger diameter bar you risk overstretching the heated grip and in the process break the fairly delicate heating filaments embedded within the replacement grip. SkiMad
Exachery! This "mechanic" also supposedly repaired the contacts and wiring for the brake lights in the Givi bag, but wired it up with the polarity reversed. We won't mention the mud that was previously brake fluid in the clutch master cylinder. Back to the heater, I might be missing the most important possible fact. Where the hell would I get a single grip heater to splice in anyway?
