Duke

Do you remember who you ordered it from?

I’d love to find one of these from a stateside vendor at a reasonable price.

You make a good point; however, I would also cut the fin, replace the plug, and then reduce the ground clearance by approximately 1/4” by adding more material to strengthen the bottom and bottom edges of the pan. I would do this as an alternative to adding weight and significantly reducing ground clearance by adding a cage to protect the unreinforced pan. I’m mostly concerned about the added weight and potentially reduced cornering clearance that may be caused by aftermarket options, especially when running fully loaded. I like some of the protective products, but they are guaranteed to add weight, and will likely reduce ground clearance. Unfortunately there is no perfect solution. By the way, I sincerely appreciate the constructive feedback. Please keep it coming.

I was thinking plain aluminum plate. That way if anything did contact it, it would be more likely to slide over rather than to bite into the surface. If I were able to add wings to the front and back or sides, I could use the epoxy to bond them to the pan for a little extra strength and more protection from the plate coming loose.

I shoulda known you owned a Miata, Mellow. I’m not sure what kind of euphemism PRHT is though. BTW...That was another joke.

Now THAT was a joke!

We would be riding Harleys. For the record, that’s not hate, that’s called a joke.

I’ve heard of that product, and I think it’s great stuff. I’m not sure that the epoxy alone would be enough. I think the bottom of the pan needs to be thicker and less flexible. Now, using that stuff around the edges to reinforce the curved part in addition to a plate could work. My biggest concerns with a steel plate are due to the possibility of corrosion die to dissimilar metals, and the possibility of adhesive failure due to the different expansion and contraction rates of steel and aluminum. After thinking about this a bit more, I wonder about just using Marine Tex to add a nice thick layer of aluminum to the bottom of the pan, and then using Marine Tex to blend in the edges. Obviously it wouldn’t be as strong as a Higdonion cage, but it would probably be strong enough for Street use.

Cast aluminum.

In looking at the pictures of this failure, I wonder if simply epoxying an extra layer of material to the bottom of the pan would provide additional protection? A piece of 1/4” steel would protect the drain plug, and would also add strength to the bottom of the pain to keep it from flexing if you were to bottom the bike on the pan. At a minimum, it would take a lot harder hit to crack the aluminum, because the crack would have to form on the stronger parts of the pan instead of the weaker flat bottom. I only wonder if the epoxy would hold.

I’m glad there are options for everyone. I’ll even admit that I was a little tri-curious at one point. However, when I can’t ride I’ll probably get a convertible of one kind or another. Hell, I’ve always wanted a Jeep, so maybe I’ll scratch that itch. Until then, I’ll ride.

Some of us have embarked upon a new farkle quest. Don’t be killing the buzz. Only joking of course, but I’m certainly planning to Mazda my ride at the next oil change. Too many instances of cracked oil pans for my tastes.

I would hate to have to move all (most) of my farkles to a new bike, so I'm sticking with what I have for now. If I make a change it'll be to a totally different bike (DR 650).

I hadn’t even considered the cost of a U-Haul. This is beginning to look like something that bears further investigation.

Crud, I suppose I’m going to have to install my Mazda plug at the next oil change, but I really like the one I’m using because it has a built in magnet. Maybe I’ll splurge and spend money now on a Higdonion to protect my pan rather than spending it later on a new pan. Then I could use my fancy drain plug.

Maybe @chitown will beat me to it. I have a feeling that he is going to be working hard to get the mods to his bike done quickly.

I have feelers out to find an oscilloscope that I can use to get a clear picture of what the ECU is actually doing to regulate the heat level of the grips. I’m sure it’s pulse width modulation, but I want to see how long the duty cycle is for each of the levels to better understand how Yamaha has the ECU programmed. I have a feeling they are doing a very low duty cycle to go along with their low resistance grips.

The menus work exactly the same as they do for the OEM heated grips. You have a choice of low/med/high while riding, and you have the ability to customize each of these settings from a sub menu. I believe the sub menu is only available when the engine is not running, but I'm not 100% certain of that.

I need to get some riding time in before I can give a real world evaluation of the warmth of the grips. Unfortunately, I'm recovering from rotator cuff surgery right now, which is why I have time to work on my bike instead of riding it. I can say that my initial testing seemed to show that the grips should be more than warm enough for my needs.

There's not a lot to see, but here goes. This is the overall...please excuse the messy garage. Here is the left side from the back. Still not much to see. And the left side from underneath where you can see the cable for the heated grips following the same path as the factory heated grips. Here is the right side, where you can see the cable running along side the throttle cables with some extra slack to allow the throttle to turn without putting the wires in a bind or stretch situation. And here is a shot from the front showing that more clearly. Like I said, not much to see, but at least it shows that this can be done in a relatively clean fashion. It's certainly nice to not have to wire in a separate switch or controller to control the grips. Really there isn't anything special about this install other than getting the grips wired correctly. Everything else is about as easy as changing grips, other than the left grip being a little extra tight with the layer of heat shrink on there and I guess routing the wires, but neither of those are really that hard to do. Duke

Start by measuring their resistance. That will help you determine if they are capable of being integrated. Also, if you do some research on advrider in the Super Tenere BIG thread, I believe people have integrated the Oxfords. I have to believe that the ECU and factory grips for both bikes are very similar.

I read several posts where the grips had failed after too short of a time period after install. I also feel that the design is overly complex, and I like the stick on elements because I am free to run whatever grips I want.

So, here is my very simple wiring diagram for the final product. The wire colors are representative of the grip heating elements (red, white, and blue), the positive from the bike (Yellow/Blue), and the ground from the bike (black). As you can see, you connect the white wires from both heating elements to the yellow/blue wire from the bike, and then you connect the red and blue wires from both heating elements to the ground from the bike.

Ok, I'm not going to bore you with pictures, and instead I'm just going to explain why I have things connected the way they are, describe how I have everything connected, and provide you with a crude wiring diagram so you can follow along. First, the disclaimer. I am not advocating that anyone do this with their bike. I am only describing what I've done with my bike. I have no understanding of anyone else’s abilities, so proceed at your own risk. I am hoping that others will join in the discussion to further everyone's understanding of Yamaha's OEM grip heater technology. Actually, calling it technology is a gross overstatement. The only thing technical is the fact that the pulse width modulation (PWM) is being provided by some kind of microcontroller (presumably the ECU) which is controlled by the menus on the dash. Other than that, the rest of this just requires a basic understanding of Ohm's Law and how PWM can adjust the heat output of the heating elements. All this having been said, please do not dump all over this thread. Instead, please ask constructive questions and provide constructive feedback. I am NOT an expert in all things Yamaha or in all things technical/electrical/electronic; however, I do have a professional background in electronics from which I drew my conclusions. With each of us bringing our own knowledge, experience, and general common sense to the forum, let's make the best use of all three and see if we can collectively come up with a properly working, safe solution that any of us can use. Now for the meat of this post. As you saw in an earlier post, I used the Heat Demon brand of grip heating elements. I’ve found their product to have reasonable quality control and reliability. The only thing you will use from the kit are the elements themselves and the heat shrink for the left grip. Everything else is not needed since you will control the heat output from the OEM menus. I won’t bore you with how to install the heating elements. That has been covered in exhaustive detail in countless places on the Internet. Just know that you need to route the wires for both elements to the right side of the bike where the two factory heated grip connectors are located. It is up to you if you want to cut off the factory connectors and wire direct, or if you want to buy some of the correct connectors (the same ones as used for our blinker connections) to connect to the heating elements and then plug into the factory connectors. This is what I did, and it works great. Once you have the grips installed and the wires routed, your next step is to make the correct connections. This is where this thread could go entirely off the rails, so please read carefully and bear with me. If you look at the wiring diagram for the bike, you will find that the factory heated grips are connected in series. This fact created a challenge for me due to the large quantity of conflicting information on the Internet regarding the resistance of the factory grips. I’ve found information stating everything from 1.5 to 2.5 Ohms per grip with some degree of accuracy, so I chose to use 1.5 Ohms for my purposes. This means that the factory configuration results in the computer seeing a total resistance of 3 Ohms. Another challenge is that the Heat Demon grips are designed to be used with a rocker switch to control the heat output, and that switch only provides off, low, and high as options. Because of this the heating elements have three wires, which can cause additional confusion. How do you connect grips with three wires into what is a two-wire system on the bike? The answer to this question comes from Ohm’s Law. The heating elements are nothing but resistors. The three wires exist only because the elements actually consist of two separate resistors to accommodate the low and high settings. You can choose to connect the wires in a variety of configurations, but by using one wire as the input and combining two wires on the output, you wind up with the two resistors in one grip connected in parallel, which results in a resistance of 4.8 Ohms per grip. If you only connect one wire on the input and one wire on the output, the resistance is higher (thanks to Ohm’s Law), and this configuration will not work for our purposes. In fact, 4.8 Ohms is a compromise, but so far it seems to be a workable compromise for me. Only time and further testing will prove if this compromise functions as needed. Now, if we connect the two grips in series the way the factory grips are connected, we will wind up with 9.6 Ohms of total resistance. This is more than three times the total resistance of the factory grips connected in series, which results in less than one third of the heat of the factory grips. This is the first configuration I tried because I was simply following in the footsteps of Yamaha. Even though the ECU recognized the elements as heated grips and provided me full access to all the associated menu options, this configuration was a failure. I could barely feel that the grips were heating when running at full blast on a 70-degree day. Back to the drawing board. Next, I started thinking about ways that I could increase the heat output of the heating elements. According to Ohm’s Law, this means that I must change one of three variables, which are voltage, current, or resistance. I had already cranked the settings in the menu to their max, so there was nothing more I could do to increase voltage. With voltage fixed, the only way to increase current is to reduce resistance. But how do you reduce the resistance of a fixed resistor? Back to Ohm’s Law. I had two identical resistors in the form of two 4.8 Ohm heating elements. What if I connected them in parallel instead of in series? The resulting total resistance would be 2.4 Ohms, which is 20% less resistance than the factory grips when connected in series. Would the ECU accept this resistance and allow me to access the heated grip menus? Would this result in my ECU going super nova and destroying the earth as we know it? The simple answers are YES and NO! By connecting the two elements within each grip heating element in parallel, and them connecting the two grip heating elements in parallel with each other as well, I arrived at a resistance that was low enough to allow the ECU to offer the heated grip options and to actually drive the heated grips at an acceptable level. FYI...with the grips connected in parallel, you do not have to worry that your bike will go up in flames should one grip fail. What will happen is that total resistance of the circuit will double due to the loss of the parallel leg, which will result in the total current flow actually decreasing instead of increasing. Basically, one grip will be cold and the other will be lukewarm at best. The good news is that this should actually make troubleshooting which grip has failed just a little easier. Early on in this post I mentioned PWM, but I haven’t mentioned it at all during the post. Well, that’s because it’s not directly relevant to the problem at hand, but it is an interesting subject that you might do well to research to understand how the bike controls the heat of the grips. I’ve also mentioned Ohm’s Law several times in the post. I won’t even try to explain the concept, because like so many thing other things you can find it well explained on the Internet, including explanations of series and parallel resistance. Thanks for reading, and please feel free to offer perspectives and feedback or to ask questions. If I don’t have an answer, I suspect someone else will offer one up. I'll try to attach my wiring diagram to the next post. Duke

The computer doesn’t actually care if the grips are in series or parallel. All it sees is total resistance. If it senses too little resistance (short) or too much resistance (open), the menu option will not appear. I don’t know exactly how much resistance it expects, but I do know two values that allowed the menu option to appear.