Heated grips argh.

I have a problem which is driving me crazy cause I am too thick to work out the answer. Posting the question here in hope that someone can help me out.

I bought a bike that had Honda factory fitted heated grips. Unfortunately the controller is missing. I have in my possession an Oxford controller but with the wires on the grips all being the same, am having difficulty working out which wire should go to which.

The controller has 6 wires, 3 pairs.

Pair one is one black wire and one red wire. On the tag it has a picture of what I assume to be the controller. This leads me to believe that it is the positive and negative. Wiring this to a spare battery and switching the controller on gives me power to the unit. So far so good.

The next pair of wires are one green and one yellow. The tag on this pair of wires has a circle with a thick straight line in it. I am assuming that this is positive to each of the grips. The third pair is one white and one blue wire. This does not have a tag on it. This I assumed would be the negative to the grips.

I have toned out the wires whilst the red and black are connected to the spare battery. If I connect a tone loop from green to blue I get a tone. If I touch yellow to white again I get a tone. This is the only configuration that produces tones. Great.

Here's the problem. Regardless of if the switch on or off, I continue to get a tone from the two paired up wires. This means that the grips will be permanently live regardless of the position of the switch. Not good. ( I tested this out on the grips and can confirm this is the case). I tried various methods and tests to see if I could work it out. I failed.

I have bought a three way switch and wired the grips to an ignition live for the time being. Grips get nice and hot and when I either turn the switch or ignition off the power is interrupted. Sorted I thought.

Problem I have, is for as long as the switch is in the live position with the ignition on, the grips continue to heat. So much so, that the grips were actually smoking. Not good.

So to save resorting to constantly switching the grips on and off, I need to get this controller figured out.

Has anyone got the Oxford heated grips fitted that has these 6 wires coming out from them? If so, would you be as kind as to trace out the wires and let me know what bloody wire should be connected to what. (I am assuming that the two wires on each of the grips will make no difference which ever way they are connected as the simply pass the current through the grips, regardless of which way the current flows).

Many thanks.

Si.

Could your controller be broken? Mine now won't switch off and has been that way for about a year now. Temperature control still works, though.

Originally Posted by Carsick

Could your controller be broken? Mine now won't switch off and has been that way for about a year now. Temperature control still works, though.

That's what I initially thought, but I have two and they both do the same.

I don't believe it. 98 views and no one else can help.

Well hopefully more information can help.

I now know that it is the yellow and green that provide the power from the motorcycle to the control unit.

I have done the following test:

With the positive connected to a battery and the negative not, I have put a meter to each of the wires to the negative on the battery.

This is the result.

With the control unit switched off.

Red (control wire) positive power.
Black (control wire) no power.
White positive power.
Blue no power.

With the control unit switched on.

Positive power to all wires.

From this I worked out that should I connect red and black to one grip and the white and blue to the other, then power would only flow to the grips when the switch was in the on position.

Well I was wrong. I connected the green wire back to the negative on the battery. The power on / off works as it should. However, when testing the loop between red and black and the loop between white and blue, power was flowing regardless of the switch being in the on or off position. What makes it worse is that the red and black wire, when the unit is switched on the volts drop to 1.5. But are 12 Volts when switched off. So where have I gone wrong

I thought that as the unit has a variable control switch, that heat to the grips would be determined by how far round the switch is turned. i.e turning clockwise increases the voltage current thus increasing the heat. But when turning the switch it made no difference to the voltage flow.

There must be someone out there that can help me no

[Red ones]

If you drip feed us info in long posts like this it will soon read like a PH story!

I can't help either!

[tigersaw]

Rather than using a tone loop or voltmeter as your test unit, try using a stop/tail lamp, this will draw similar current to the grip, and as such you will get a better indication from the brightness of the lamp if there is any control/regulation going on.

From your description of smoking grips I assume there is no thermal regulation built in, and since there are just 2 wires to each grip I assume no feedback to the controller.

Find the controller on the net and post link, maybe we can find out more about it.

I'll try the bulb idea, thanks.

As for the grips smoking, they were on the bike when I got it. I am assuming that they are standard Honda heated grips. I have no idea about them at all.

The controller is the Oxford hot grips one.

[northwind]

The hotgrips controller is pretty much just a variable resistor, I think. Thermistor? Can't remember that bit of standard grade physics Sounds like the Honda one is a bit more clever and regulates heat by on-off intervals rather than by reducing the power. The Honda grips are more powerful than the Oxford ones, I think, at least they're more powerful than mine.

[tigersaw]

Since there is no thermal sensing, I can think of two ways the controller will work. One is to pulse the power, the mark/space ratio determining the temperature. The cheaper way, and I would suspect by looking at the controller size the method oxford use, would be to just use a rheostat. This simply increases the resistance and thus lowers the current. The controller will get hot in use. If you can get the back off the contoller you will soon see - if there is just a big round thing then its a rheostat.

[northwind]

That's the word, rheostat. Certainly that's what the Hotgrips control does- as cunningly evidence by me throwing it in the bin and fitting a switch in its place, and finding no difference at all between that and full power with the original box.