After years of saying I wouldn't, ordered some heated glove liners.

[SS109]

Still waiting on my heated vest that I ordered from Gerbing back in early November. Emailed many times and left several messages after waiting on hold for 15+ minutes. Still no response.

 

[kurth83]

I ordered from them initially, got an email saying it was back ordered,
and gave me the option to cancel my order.

Road Rider had them in stock so I had them a few hours later.

 

[JPK]

I headed over to Road Rider today. Their selection of heated gloves and liners was a little thin. They've been selling heated gear like crazy lately.

They only had Gerbing glove liners in XS and M sizes. The M was a bit too small for me, but I was able to get a rough idea of what it would be like to wear a heated liner inside a regular glove. Not for me - way too bulky and logistically a huge PITA.

The Gerbing G3 and T5 gloves feel like they'd be plenty warm enough (they have a fixture where you can plug in the gloves to feel the heating) but they have next to nothing in the way of crash protection. It's really too bad, as the T5's are otherwise very nice gloves.

Even though I didn't find what I was looking for today, I've pretty much decided to go with the Warm & Safe ultimate touring gloves, as I think they're the closest to what I'm looking for: heated, waterproof, and some crash protection.

FWIW- The folks at Road Rider said that the Gerbing stuff was coming in veeeery slowly, so I'm not surprised that peoples' direct orders from Gerbing are also taking a long time to ship.

 

[Oh My Sack!]

My wife nd I run the Gerbing heated liner jackets and the gloves on my FJR with 2 dual controllers. There just isn't anything better than turning them on and having that warm sensation on your body. It's incredible how much better you are able to ride when your being warmed up. I never realized how tense I was even though I felt war when bundled up in layers. Now we're free to move about without constricting layers and the sensation of warm and toasty with the cold ambient air gives you that awesome feeling and it's fun to ride again in all weather conditions.

 

[kurth83]

Rode with them today for the first time. The 9-cell pack worked ok.
The liners are a litte stiff, hope they loosen up, I would have preferred
the large size, but Road Rider only had Mediums. The extra 30 seconds
to suit up is annoying, I generally buy gear with the idea of reducing
suit up time, hopefully a little practice will improve that.

In any case I had to have them on their maximum setting in the high 30's
we had this morning, and it wasn't quite the heaven I had been promised,
but lots better than just heated grips.

Check out how I wired the controller (Gerbing says it is waterproof,
not sure I am willing to test that though):

 

[ST Guy]

You can make it much more convenient if you wire up some power to your bike and get yourself a jacket liner as well. The jacket has the sockets to plug the gloves built into the end of each sleeve. Just suit up, put your helmet on, put your gloves on and plug them into the jacket, and then when you get on, plug into the bike. Super easy and convenient and you get the added warmth from the jacket liner which is AWESOME. (As others have said.) It's well worth the added money and effort to wire the bike up.

 

[JPK]

You can make it much more convenient if you wire up some power to your bike and get yourself a jacket liner as well. The jacket has the sockets to plug the gloves built into the end of each sleeve. Just suit up, put your helmet on, put your gloves on and plug them into the jacket, and then when you get on, plug into the bike. Super easy and convenient and you get the added warmth from the jacket liner which is AWESOME. (As others have said.) It's well worth the added money and effort to wire the bike up.

+1 to all of this. Wiring the bike up is trivially simple, and the plug comes in handy for any number of other things, from air pumps to plugging in a battery tender.

The Jacket liner is almost a prerequisite to heated gloves IMO. In fact, the vast majority of the time, if you already have heated grips and you go with a jacket, it will provide enough extra warmth to the hands by heating the blood flowing to the hands that heated gloves aren't necessary.

For those occasions where heated grips and heated jacket still aren't enough, being able to plug the gloves right into the ends of the jacket sleeves is a great convenience.

 

[kurth83]

After a month of riding with them I had some more thoughts.

First let me mention that I don't need a vest, my jacket is super warm,
only my arms ever get a bit cold, and over heating the hands slightly
warms the arms just fine.

As far as not being cabled to the bike, I am starting to enjoy being able
to heat my hands while walking around, especially after a ride for a minute
or so to let the heat soak in.

The battery pack is working fine, I get almost an hour at full heat.
And twice that at 30% setting. More than enough for my commute.
My idea of enough, is to only need to charge once a day (takes about 3 hours typically).
If I needed more I would switch to 3000 mah AA's over the 2000 mah ones
I am using now.

Gerbings heating pattern (as mentioned before, top of hands and fingers only),
leaves a bit to be desired because the thumbs aren't heated. I didn't notice
the thumbs were unheated at first, but after some cold rides it has become a sore
thumb.

Everything else is great.

 

[rogerc]

I appreciate you guys ordering all of this cold winter items.
According to Murphy's Law we all be riding in warm weather once you get delivery.
RC

 

[JMardy]

You're missing my earlier point. A battery pack will NOT work. Period. End of story. Well, it might if you had a car battery or two, but short of that it will not work. Or it'll work for a short period of time like it'll make your gloves warm for 5 or 10 minutes or so or even a bit more and then you're left without any heat. Ride out to the coast and your hands will be cold when you get there and no hope of keeping them warm for the ride back.

I have the Gerbings with the battery pack in the glove and they work great. At the 50% level I can get to work and home, around 35 minutes each way.