jcstokes wrote on 01/16/17 at 19:42:43:


I really don't think the Savage has any extra electrical powers to run heated grips....the charging circuit is only 100 Watts total.  And that has to power a a 45/55 watt headlight, 6 watts of running lights up front, a 3 watt tail light, a couple of watts of instrument lights......that only leaves 34 watts for the brake light, turn signals, horn and charging circuit.

Kenny:

Sure it would be possible to use a storage battery for heat - just don't tie it into the electrical system on the bike.

I looked and a Gerbing vest uses 6.4 amps  (90 watts), gloves use 2.2 amps (31 watts), heated grips use about 3 amps (42 watts).  A battery for a Savage is 14 amp hours - so technically you could run the vest for a couple of hours, the gloves for 6 hours....the grips for 4.6 hours - however lead acid batteries don't like to be deep cycled and the battery may not last very long.

You might be better off buying heated gear that is made to run off batteries that are included with the gear.

The Honda ST1100 can run heated gear easily....as it has a 40 amp (576 watt) alternator!  Most big bikes have similar electric capacity to power electric add-on stuff!

Kenny, the savage does have some surplus power and more so once the battery been fully recharged after starting.  How quickly this occurs depends upon your travel habits.  If you got up to 60 mph or 4500 rpm and kept it there for 1/2 hour, most likely the bat will be fully charged.  I don't think the rectifier has any regulation functions that cars do at least no one has talked about any.  So I don't think there's an easy way to determine if the bat is fully charged like monitoring the voltage and seeing it drop.  One of these days I'll have a VM attached to the bike and I'll be able to monitor it.

Converting the lights to LED would help, charging the bat between rides would help, even warming up the accessories prior to the ride would help.

My estimate is the savage is capable of running 2 55 watt headlights while running at least 60 after the bat has recovered.

There were a few here that added the driving lights and drained their bats flat in no time.
Some are 50w, so you end up with 155w on all the time.  Ain't gonna do.
Yet swap out those Halogen bulbs at 4.5 amps each for LEDs at less than 2 amps each and you're fine.

Been using 1 for a couple years, cheapy.  Only complaint is the fan's busted, still ticking though.  Some use copper braid for heat dissipation.  Get a metal bucket so the heat will go thru.