Originally posted on Squidbusters.com.
Heated grips arent just nice for colder wintery days, they are great on early morning starts before the day heats up or those slightly colder days in Spring and Fall. They feel pretty nice when it is raining or windy too
My Monster is now the second bike that I have installed the
Dual Star Heated Grips on, and for they money they are AWESOME! My husband had Hot Grips on his previous bike, and he now has Dual Star and likes them much better.
I had bought a
mini handlebar mounted switch from HotGrips to use rather than the huge switch that comes with the Dual Star Kit. (Dont get the handlebar mounted switch - plastic is crap. Myself and two others bought this handlebar mount and it just shatters. Pictures are below. Just get the mini switch if you get anything from Hot Grips.)
Mini Switch (L) vs huge Dual Star switch (R)
Bad plastic
On the Ducati, deciding where to incorporate a switch was a problem. There really isn’t much room anywhere on the Monsters. I thought the handlebar mounted switch was perfect – small and out of the way on the handlebar, you don’t have to drill your bike, and it is already wired up ready to go. From the picture, you know that didnt work out...
First things first: we took off the seat and bungeed the tank up to the ceiling to get to the battery and I took off the old grips. Our trick is to stick a skinny screwdriver in the grip, squirt a little WD-40 in there and roll the screwdriver around the bar. This gets the WD-40 everywhere and unsticks the grip from the bar. It just slides right off, and they aren’t ruined so you can save them as backups or ebay them.
Ryan started on the wiring and decided to use the tail light as the switched power source for the relay that would power the grips. We decided to have a relay so that the grips will only be on when the bike ignition switch is engaged. That would stink if my switch got bumped on and it killed my battery while I was at work. Another reason to do it this way was is so that the grips won’t be piggy-backed on another circuit in the wiring harness, such as the headlight as recommended by Dual Star. Using a relay also meant not having to splice into the other circuit wire and would allow the bike to be put back to stock easily.
Ryan used his birthday present, a Weller Cold Heat soldering iron to solder the power wire (red) to the tail light spade connector/wire. This put the connection under the removable spade cover making the relay switch wire more stealthy.
While Ryan was prepping more wiring (soldering, extending/trimming wires, putting on heat shrink tubing), I decided to put on the Dual Star heated grips. They are basically just big stickers. You just have to remember to clean off all the WD-40 with alcohol before application. Here is one installed on the clutch side (yum, CRGs).
After putting on both grips and determining how we were going to run the wires to hide them in the Ducati trellis frame and where we were going to ground the grips, we decided to install the switch we removed from its plastic housing - the shattered plastic handlebar mount was thrown in the trash. Then we started investigating where we could hide the switch. We tried looking in the clutch side plastic assembly and we found the switch would probably
just fit. Ryan said it was up to me on whether I wanted to drill my bike, especially since we wouldn’t know whether it would truly fit until we had it in there. I was pissed about the crappy handlebar mount (we spent some time trying to repair it before this point) and I just wanted to be finished, so I gave the go ahead. What do you know, it fit!!
The rest was just wire cleanup, installing the relay, and putting the clutch side control box back together. And putting on my new Spider grips. Aquanet hairspray makes wonderful grip glue. :biggrin
Relay.
Installed switch.
I think it turned out really well, but if you dont want to drill your bike to install the switch, do what my husband ended up doing when he installed the Dual Stars on his bike. We just got a little metal L bracket, cut it down, painted it a flat black, and attached it to the bike via one of the clutch instrument housing handlebar mounting bolts. Looks very clean and no drilling. I wish we had thought of that before we drilled my bike.
