New Commuter700
Site Supporter
- Joined
- May 27, 2018
- Messages
- 234
- Reaction score
- 58
- Points
- 28
- Location
- San Tan Valley, AZ
After a season of trying different things I settled on long john bottoms (if it's cold enough I could wear them all day), a winter parka, a sweatshirt, a neoprene balaclava and ...gloves. All that first winter I tried different things but I would get to work and my fingers would be so cold that I would go into the bathroom and run warm water over them until they felt better. I tried; my old gauntlet leather gloves, lithium battery heated gloves and larger snow gloves with silk liners. At the end of the season I bought snowmobile mittens that would fit over my snow gloves but we didn't have another cold day. I was looking forward to the following season to see if they were really workable since mobility would be a bit limited. I did think about heated grips but I wasn't sure they would be effective for me and it meant another modification. After all, my problem wasn't that my hands were cold, it was my fingers. The battery powered heated gloves would almost burn my palms but the fingers stayed cold.
That next fall a coworker gave me a gift certificate to a motorcycle only website since he was done riding and I looked at the plug-in heated glove liners. They were designed to plug into a heated jacket but I could instead run them right off the battery with a controller that I mounted to the frunk with velcro. they made ALL. the. difference. I started using them on the lowest setting even if it was only 45 degrees on the way to work, but with them I could now run at below 30 degrees. Yes I still was cold when I got to work but my fingers were toasty and it felt good to get in my truck and warm up over the next few hours.
So my vote of the most important accessory for cold riding is my heated glove liners.
Oh and apologies to my northern neighbors, I live in AZ where after a summer of riding in over 100 degree heat, 30 degrees feels REALLY cold.
That next fall a coworker gave me a gift certificate to a motorcycle only website since he was done riding and I looked at the plug-in heated glove liners. They were designed to plug into a heated jacket but I could instead run them right off the battery with a controller that I mounted to the frunk with velcro. they made ALL. the. difference. I started using them on the lowest setting even if it was only 45 degrees on the way to work, but with them I could now run at below 30 degrees. Yes I still was cold when I got to work but my fingers were toasty and it felt good to get in my truck and warm up over the next few hours.
So my vote of the most important accessory for cold riding is my heated glove liners.
Oh and apologies to my northern neighbors, I live in AZ where after a summer of riding in over 100 degree heat, 30 degrees feels REALLY cold.