Question about installing heated grips for the electrically inclined

[upthemaiden]

We found a pair of heated grips we bought years ago for my wife's GS, but now that we found them I'm going to put them on the XB. They're not the official Buell heated grips, and my bike is an 03 so nothing is pre-wired for heated grips. I have the actual grips on, and I can handle mounting the switch, but I know nothing about electrical work and ground wires. Is there anyone who can help me figure out where to attach the power wire and the ground wire? I assume I can just wire the ground into one of the bolts that mounts the headlight brackets or something like that, please let me know if I'm wrong about that. What about the main wire? The instructions say.....

"Take a length of 18 guage wire stranded wire and connect it to the end of the single wire which extends from the 'Y' junction and connect it to the accessory lug on the rear of the snowmobile ignition switch"

The grips are already hooked up with the grips to the switch, and from the switch through a resistor on one side then those wires meet and you're left with the one wire that just needs attached to the power source. The ground wire is the two wires from the heating elements that you run to each other and then put ground onto something.

Is there anything behind the flyscreen that you would recommend attaching these wires to? or am I going to have to get a piece of wire to extend the main wire under the airbox closer to the battery so I can attach it to one of the main wires?

Thanks in advance! Let me know if you need any pictures of anything.

 

[xtremelow]

As long as you run a separate fuse line off the main power leading to the ignition you should be set.

Dave_xb12r, has heated grips so PM him, he can point you in the direction he went with his setup.

 

[upthemaiden]

I read somewhere else about wiring it into the ignition somewhere else on the internet, I'll have to look into it. I'll try looking at a wiring diagram tomorrow to see if I can figure out which wire would be which. I ran a length of wire all the way along the wiring harness and under my seat so if I need to I can wire it into something under the seat. Wiring it straight into the ignition would be a lot cleaner though.

Any idea how I'd find out what size fuse I need for something like that? So far I've got everything else wired up and ready to go, all I need to do is hook up the main wire and make the bracket to mount the switch.

I'll PM Dave tomorrow and see what he knows about it. Thanks!

 

[xtremelow]

Seems like the kit should have come with one but I would think a 5-amp fuse would be good.

 

[upthemaiden]

The one side has a white box inline. It might be a fuse. I assumed it was a resistor for the low setting though. It's a pretty cheap kit. The last one I used came with some more stuff, but this was just one we bought to put on my wife's GS500 about 6 years ago, and we just found it a couple weeks ago. The instructions even told me to use a piece of 18ga. wire they didn't include so I had to go to the store just to buy $1 worth of wire.