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Regardless of price which is better: Heated gloves or heated grips?

rbryson

New member
I ride a 1975 R90/6 and am strongly considering either heated gloves or heated grips. I have upgraded to electronic ignition (Omega III). Please advise.
 
Looked at your profile and really can't tell a thing about the who, what, where, or how you ride. The charging system on the /6 and earlier is kinda minimal at best. The electronic ignition has NOTHING to do with this decision nor how your electrical system can keep up with heated grips........I remember someone a few weeks ago mentioning they had heated grips on their /6 so it must be a can do proposition. If you are using the bike as a daily rider in a part of the world that it is COLD every day from late October til March then YES......Whatever you have to do to get the job done.......BUT.......If you just ride on a weekend here and there or live like on the Gulf coast or southern California then I would totally say the gloves............God bless........Dennis
 
My experience is that good electric gloves are dryer & warmer. They are also more cumbersome to operate the hand controls. A bit of a trade off.
 
Heated gloves also require you to fiddle with wires and connectors.

Heated grips are *much* more effective if your bike's grips are shielded from the wind, either by handguards or a sufficiently wide fairing or windshield.
 
How long and how cold??? Gloves are better, they'll keep the backs of your hands warm, as well as the palms. Grips are for light-duty, inconvenient, cold. Gloves are for no-kidding, hypothermia-is-dangerous cold.:dance
 
I have no horse in this race, because I haven't used either heated grips or gloves. In my old age, I probably never will subject myself to cold. As a freind of mine once said, "I ride for pleasure so when it becomes a chore, I don't ride." Riding in bitter cold would be a chore to me.

However, I have had some experience in the cold, so I thought I would add my 2 cents.

I rode my old R90/6 13 miles to work each and every day back some 20 years ago, here up in Ohio and during that year, we had temps down to 0 with regular falls of shows. I did this because it was my only transportation that year unless I took the family car which would have left my wife and 4 kids with none.

I purchased motorcycle "mittens" that had long cuffs. Without any electric, my hands were toasty warm all winter. I also used to race what were called "hare scrambles" in the winter. Each race took about 2-1/2 hours through grueling circumstances, cold, snow, terrible terrain, and creeks that were icy along with cold water. I am not sure how they would work on longer trips or in other types of riding, but they worked really well for me. Yes, they were bulky for the buttons, but after you get things turned on, the only buttons I used were hi/low beam, horn, and turn signals. All easily done with the thumbs.

So, if your type of riding is similar to mine, and your temps/weather are similar this may help you make your decision. Personally, I would go with the heated gloves.

I would only caution that you monitor the charging. It takes time for the older systems with lower alternator output to build the system back up after even just a startup. Using a bit of electric will slow that process down even further, so you need to ride long enough to make that happen. Short trips not good unless you have access to charger (battery tender) in between to get system back up and keep it up.
 
I have done both

If I am on the bike for an hour or two, my heated grips do just fine. But if I am doing a long ride, I want my heated gloves.
 
All of the above is right- I've used them all.

When young and poor, those snowmobile mittens worked really well- no cold separate fingers. Had to use my bike every day in snow county, no other transportation. Clumsy though, not my choice now.

Handguards are the most important thing for cold weather riding. Can be Barbusters (shield) type or enclosure type (lie Hippo Hands). The latter are extremely effective but a bit of an acquired taste.

Re the glove, if you have shields there is no weather you can't ride in with good cold weather gloves. The BMW Winter Gloves are excellent.

Electric gloves a a step up from winter gloves BUT they come with the complications of plugs and wiring.

Got no idea about that airhead charging system but electric gloves are normally used with at least an electric jacket. The combo will use about 100W....
 
Even with heated grips my hands sometimes gets cold. A couple of years ago I added a pair of heated liners to my riding gear. There are no wires since each of the liners run off of it's own battery. My longest ride so far with them is about 2 hours and the batteries was still keeping them warm.

Wayne
 
I find that electric gloves keep the tops of my hands from getting cold while the heated grips, on the low setting, keep the palms of the hands comfortable. This combination works well for me on my R1100. :thumb The K does not have heated grips, and the gloves seem to work fine with this bike, although the mirrors are setup as a wind block on this machine.

As others have mentioned, it is inconvenient putting the gloves on with the wiring, but for a lengthy, cold ride, certainly worth the hassle. :dance
 
50+ with no rain Grips fine. Wet, below 50- or both Gloves a must for me.
 
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Sixteen years in AK and several rides up and down the roads to AK have convinced me that heated gloves are the way to go.
 
While I like the overall warmth of the gloves, they are just a bit too bulky for me. The newest stuff might be better though. (my Gerbings were a couple years old)

On my last trip for the season, I used some removable grip covers from Aerostich. They got pretty warm, so I unplugged the pant liners and used the dual controller for the jacket liner and the grips. Perfect.

I also brought along some Givi Covers in case it got real cold or if it was looking like rain. This is what they look like on my Honda Rebel. Completely block wind and rain and allowed me to use my lighter weight gloves when it was 19F out.

rebelgivi2-1.jpg
 
You'll always have your heated grips with you . . . .for that day when you stayed too long, it got dark too fast, you took that detour that ended up going over a high mountain pass, or the temperature dropped unexpectedly.
I use both but the heated gloves are for longer and better planned cold weather trips. Good heated grips with handguards are one of the best mods I've made on my airheads.
 
If you have no other electric clothing I would start with electric jacket liner
type with heated collar forearms and kidney area
Surprising how warm the rest of you feels if the kidney area is heated - all your blood gets warmed
So given the limited output of the /6 I would put the first available watts into a jacket liner

Wear mittens loose enough that you can easily move your fingers about in them and get them on and off
easily by trapping between knee and tank to quickly wipe glasses or such bare handed tasks underway

If there is available electricity after the jacket liner (aftermarket alternator etc.) then next would be heated grips
in addition to the mittens

Learn not to actually squeeze grip the grips unless necessary - just rest palms on grips for most of ride
this will keep hands warmer inside mittens wiggling fingers etc.

Heated gloves add a complexity and lack of easy removal and reattach underway that I am not willing to live with.
Tried them and hated them compared to good synthetic mittens with modern insulation and thin leather palms
 
Cold means different things to different people, and without knowing where you are or how your ride (profile would help) I'm not sure what your baseline is.

I ride year round in Vermont at temps down to 10F - gotta draw the line somewhere - but I also take precautions like dressing in layers and always taking the same route below freezing so I know where every culvert, wet spot, etc is located. I find bulky gloves awkward, and find plugging in a pain. My solution was to wear my Held Steve II gloves year round, and installing my Hippo Hands at temps below 35F. I find that the heated grips are much more effective when wind is eliminated from the equation.

But if my ride is longer than 75 miles at temps below 20F, definitely Gerbings.
 
Handguards are the most important thing for cold weather riding. Can be Barbusters (shield) type or enclosure type (lie Hippo Hands). The latter are extremely effective but a bit of an acquired taste.

Anybody used the Hippo hands or something similar on an RT? I think they might interfere with seeing out the mirrors?
 
The latter are extremely effective but a bit of an acquired taste.

An acquired taste indeed. When Vetter originally came out with HippoHands back in the late 70's I almost would not use them based on the aesthetics alone. But as an R&D employee I was expected to ride all year long and finally installed a set. I was hooked after that, and not anywhere near as cumbersome as they look. But I always rode them with a Windjammer on the bike, so I can't comment on how they would work with a naked bike; the aerodynamics might be totally different.

hippo-hands1.jpg


The "new" HippoHands company posts the following warning on their R100RT page.

PLEASE NOTE: In the pursuit of full transparency, we need to point out to our customers BEFORE they order, that if no significant wind protection exists on the bike, blowback of the muffs against the levers is a possibility, causing possible damage to brake or clutch components if it persists. If this is the case, you should install metal brackets or small inexpensive brush guards, in order to prevent this from happening. These are available in stores or Internet for around $30-40.

What it sounds like they are describing is the levers being "compressed" by the air pressure against them resulting in the brakes being lightly applied and/or the clutch being inadvertently "feathered". With the RT clearance might be a problem when going lock-to-lock (as in turning around in the driveway, etc.) - certainly something worth a call to their sales office (?)

Hippo_Hands_No_Mirror_With_skirt.jpg
 
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