Think I'm in love 
Bought some wire from Farnell, £12 for a 100' roll. Ran the wiring into the liner of my HG jacket with about twice as much wire in the front as the back, and with a couple of runs along the front of the arms. In total I used 31'. I would think at 0.1ohm per foot this would be right around 3ohms, but my multimeter reckons it's 5ohm, giving me just 35watts rather than the 50 I was expecting.
The wiring runs up and down the sections of quilting very neatly, and I tried to run the needle and wire on the inside of the quilting so that it's inside the insulating material. It was a bit fiddly but you can't really tell there's anything different about the liner other than the cable coming out at one corner. and I can take it out again if I sell the jacket or get a different electric jacket
Wired it up to a dc barrel connector so that it unplugs if I forget to undo it and step off the bike and temporarily into a plug for the accessory socket. Once I've fitted the centech fuse panel that arrived this morning via ebay I'll wire it permanently into that.
Rode into London this afternoon, so a good chance to try it out. Started the bike, zipped up the jacket and plugged in. Took about half a minute to get that lovely warm feeling.
I was just wearing a long sleeved thermal under the jacket and was toasty all the way to town and back.
Total investment is around £15.
Now, it's not perfect. The liner is short, so it doesn't cover kidneys or round your waist, but when I'm wearing the waterproof trousers they come up over that area so it won't be too bad. There's also no collar to warm which many of the commercial designs have. It's not as snug as a commercial unit either, so if you breath in you get a bit of extra warmth so it's kind of pulse width modulated by breathing
However, for the money it's fantastic.
I'm toying with adding one of these which would go under the seat and just give me a remote control for the heat on the bars. That said, the heat output was just about right so I might just leave it as it is for now and see how I get on.
I think next winter I will buy one of the jackets from warmnsafe which would be longer and have the heated collar but until then I think this will make a big difference to my winter riding and those cold mornings on the way to work.
J.
Bought some wire from Farnell, £12 for a 100' roll. Ran the wiring into the liner of my HG jacket with about twice as much wire in the front as the back, and with a couple of runs along the front of the arms. In total I used 31'. I would think at 0.1ohm per foot this would be right around 3ohms, but my multimeter reckons it's 5ohm, giving me just 35watts rather than the 50 I was expecting.
The wiring runs up and down the sections of quilting very neatly, and I tried to run the needle and wire on the inside of the quilting so that it's inside the insulating material. It was a bit fiddly but you can't really tell there's anything different about the liner other than the cable coming out at one corner. and I can take it out again if I sell the jacket or get a different electric jacket
Wired it up to a dc barrel connector so that it unplugs if I forget to undo it and step off the bike and temporarily into a plug for the accessory socket. Once I've fitted the centech fuse panel that arrived this morning via ebay I'll wire it permanently into that.
Rode into London this afternoon, so a good chance to try it out. Started the bike, zipped up the jacket and plugged in. Took about half a minute to get that lovely warm feeling.
I was just wearing a long sleeved thermal under the jacket and was toasty all the way to town and back. Total investment is around £15.
Now, it's not perfect. The liner is short, so it doesn't cover kidneys or round your waist, but when I'm wearing the waterproof trousers they come up over that area so it won't be too bad. There's also no collar to warm which many of the commercial designs have. It's not as snug as a commercial unit either, so if you breath in you get a bit of extra warmth so it's kind of pulse width modulated by breathing
However, for the money it's fantastic.I'm toying with adding one of these which would go under the seat and just give me a remote control for the heat on the bars. That said, the heat output was just about right so I might just leave it as it is for now and see how I get on.
I think next winter I will buy one of the jackets from warmnsafe which would be longer and have the heated collar but until then I think this will make a big difference to my winter riding and those cold mornings on the way to work.
J.
