Anyone using heated grips? My brother bought some and found the instalation instructions seriously lacking.He has a 1999 Xplorer 400.Any detailed info or help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I just put a set on my Sportsman 500. I bought them from Cabela's. I don't recall the exact price but it seems like 49 bucks got them to my door.

Installation was pretty easy; Remove the upper half of the headlight pod. Two phillips screws under the front headlight area and three screws facing the driver.
My '99 Xplorer 400 doesn't have the accessory power outlet that the Sportsman has, (I just spliced into the wires to the acc. jack on my Sp500), so you should tie into the wire from the ignition switch. Don't tie into the hot wire from the battery-if you leave the grip heat on, it will drain the batt.

From there, just follow the wiring diagram and instructions. From past experience, heated grips are a real luxury that I can't hardly do without. I'm a little surprised that they aren't a factory option for we riders in cold weather areas.

 

Mike:

You might also want to try a pair of the Polaris Handguards. They really do a great job of breaking the wind and keeping your hands warmer on those bone chilling rides.

 

We’re using the “hot grips,” heated grips, the Polaris handguards and electric thumb warmers. If you know anything about wiring the installation is pretty straightforward. Get power to the grips via the switch and they “light up.”

Now I’m going to complicate things though (of course). Since I never expect to use the hot grips and the thumb warmer independently I wired them both to a single switch so one switch turns them both on or off together. After some testing I also saw no need for “low” on the hot grips but found the “high” on the thumb warmer would just about burn a hole in your thumb unless it was real cold. So I hooked them up to a double pole, double throw, center off switch (Radio Shack). Center turns them both off. Switched to one side the hot grips are on high and the thumb warmer is on low. Switched to the other side the hot grips are still on high but now the thumb warmer is on high too. This is just my personal preference.

To make it even a little more complicated, after a couple weekends of below zero riding we found that by the end of the day (when it REALLY mattered!) the hot grips and the thumb warmers were barely working. The only difference between day and night riding for us is that when we switch the lights to high on our ’99 500SP and 500Mag I have them wired so that all 3 lights come on. By process of elimination it was obvious that the warmers just weren’t getting enough juice when all the lights came on. My power for the warmers was coming from whatever wire I could find “under the hood” that went hot with ignition on. Before our last ride (230 miles on sled trails in 4 days) I rewired both machines so the warmers would draw power through driving lamp relays I had sitting around. I used 12ga wire from the battery to the relay and from the relay to the warmer switch, and set it up so the relay goes hot with the ignition switch on. Problem solved! Since we were running with a lot of sled traffic we ran with all three lights on all day long for safety and the warmers stayed consistently toasty the entire ride.

Hey Thor, get back to work ;}

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FloodRunner, on the Wisconsin River