Anyone else have any problems with their heated grips??? I installed Arctic Cats heated grips and thumb throttle on my machine about 3 months ago. Hadnt had any trouble til the other day, something blew the main fuse , replaced the fuse, noticed the wires where melted in one spot near the hi/lo switch. seperated wires and used plastic wire looming to hold wires . thought everything was okay. Well not all was well , for some reason wire decided to continue burning, it burned form the switch all the way to the wire clip splicer near the fuse block. All A/C directions where followed to the letter. The thing that doesnt make sense to me is that it never blew the fuse in the fuse block

 

Sorry to hear that 2rider. The fuse in the fuse block didn't go because you shorted out before the fuse. In other words, there was a short in the wiring from one contact to another that didn't see the fuse block. It may have been a bad thumb warmer, switch or the grips could have been the colprate. I'm not a electrical expert. The system's not that hard to trouble shoot but you need to have some knowledge about 12 volt systems. It may be to your advantage to ask the dealer to install the next set of grips so if something goes wrong, it's not your problem. It may be costly but it's only once.
Don't loose the faith...
Chuck

 

Something is drawing to much current for those wires to handle, that's why they melted, when you reinsulated the wires you didn't fit anything but the direct short of the 2 bare wires touching (that's what blew you fuse) so the original problem continued. Probably one of the heaters is partially short drawing to many amps. If you know how to use an ohmmeter you can check the ohms of each heater against each other. One of them will be a lot lower than the other and that's will be the bad one.

 

well hope arctic cat does something for me, i will be contacting them tomorrow. I read the box over and the directions and it says nothing about a warrenty on them , i would think they should be warrentied
Not sure what would have caused a short.

 

How big of a fuse was inline? should be 3 amps or 5 at the most. If you had a 10 or 20 amp fuse, its possible to burn up that small gauge wire, and not blow a fuse.
Ohm out the grips, after you disconnect them from the power. As long as they dont show an open circuit, and they have some resistance, they are probably good.
The short is gonna be in the wires or connectors or switch,before the element. If the short was after the element, it wouldnt hurt a thing, and youd never know about it.
Id start over, with the wiring, and put an inline fuse (radio shack has them), of 3 amps in line with the power line coming off the battery ( or whatever your sourse is), and try again.
Seal up the connections and switch, to water proof them, so water cant short them out.

 

the fuse that the grips where running off of was the a/c one , that was what the directions told me to do , it went into the line with one of them clips that clamp through the line. This is also the same one that the dealer installed the winch on to.

 

Contacted Artic Cat today, first its hard to get a hold of them, second they basically told me that since i installed them there was no warrenty. If the dealer had installed them only 30 days. I feel thats a poor warrenty , and not a way to get someone to buy your product.

 

Considering the wide range of electro mechanical aptitude of the general public I think it amazing that AC sells the parts un-installed.
I mean - you may have done everything correct but something went wrong and its darn hard to blame AC when there is no direct evidence of manufacturer defect.

Its always a roll of the dice for us do-it-yourself'rs. Sometimes we save money using our talents, sometime its like Forest Gump said - Life is like a box of chocolates. Yours just melted some.

I actually have a set of those grips sitting on my desk right in front of me. I havn't installed them as Im concerned about the adhesive setting up when its so darn cold here.

 

...And the more I read about these heated grips, the less I think I'm going to try them. I think I'll just buy bigger (or heated [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img] ) gloves.

 

Mrtommy, Its very rare to get defective parts, dont let this story put you off from heated grips. Once you have used them, youll never have a quad with out them. If it gets really cold where your at, get the thumb warmer too. Another good thing, you cant forget and leave them at home like gloves.