KawasakiTrax Community
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: mswyka on January 31, 2019, 01:58:40 PM
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I have been looking at handlebar warmers. The ones that we have almost look like shotgun shells that are stuffed into the ends of the bars. But when I do an internet search for handlebar warmers most of the ones i see look more like the defroster in the back window of my car.
So: 1. Does anyone know where to find bar warmers like the ones i already have?, and
2. does anyone have any experience with this other kind of bar warmer?
To me, knowing how hard it is to put the Kawasaki grips on and off the bar I can't help but think that putting the grip on would destroy the rear window defroster style warmer.
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Mark
The style you have can be found. But it is getting tricky. There are some NOS ones kicking around in John Deere packages.
It is surprising how well the grips will go on over the defroster style. Grip needs to be heated before they are installed.
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The internal cartridge type are "Polly Heaters", which is a brand name. Polly is reportedly out of business (?) but some NOS does show up on ebay now and then. There were two models, single heat and dual heat. The single heat take about 33 watts and the dual about 33/22 wired in parallel. The 33 watts may dim your headlight when the brake light is activated with a 120 watt system, leastwise it did on my John Deere Liquifire/440 Kawasaki Invader type engine. It was amazing (to me) how much an 1157 tail light bulb draws when the brake light is activated. The easiest fix I found was an LED tail light bulb with brake light. That fixed my dimming problem. Frustrating and dangerous, you have the warmers on, you come hot into a sharp bumpy curve in the trail in the black of night, hit the brake, and headlamp becomes a candle. But then again, I do not know if my sled is producing its rated 120 watts. Its a pull start. Hope my experience is of some help.
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This is all good information.
We have bar warmers on two or three of our sleds. Something that I appreciate on the colder days. In using them, I have never noticed a problem with dimming of the lights.
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One more thing to consider, I have a couple sleds that came with or had handle bar heaters on them that required drilling a hole in the handle bar for the wires. The handle bar cracked at the hole and had to be replaced.
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There is a company that makes a battery powered hand covers that clamp onto the handle bars they seem to work pretty well
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It's better to use battery powered gloves,. They can last up to 8 hours.