Heated Jacket Not Working!

[Sunday Rider]

Thinking about it, my wireless controller battery had to be replaced. After replacing the battery, I had to resynch to wireless controller to the harness's controller. The controller on my jacket side has manual buttons to also control the heat. It would be worth checking its functionality.

Chris

One of the reasons I like the old fashioned wired dual portable controller; fewer things to fiddle with, when something isn't working. I may upgrade to a remote if this one dies; it is more than 12 years old and only 1 glitch so far and just a couple of weeks ago, flawless last week.

 

[st11ray]

Yeah but...the harness itself usually has an inline fuse as well. We tend to skip thinking of it because it is tucked away out of sight...but its there.

Chris

No it's not. I cut the fuse holder off and wired it through the fuse box. Just like I did on the ST for 15 years.

 

[Uncle Phil]

Do you by any chance have a SAE battery tender connector on the bike?
There are adapters that go from SAE to coax that would get you current to the gear without the controller for testing the gear.
Just a thought.
Also, I had a weird issue where a coax connector had 'broken' right where the wire goes into the plastic.
You couldn't see it unless you bent the connector end quite a bit.
I fought that for a while as it would blow a fuse if it was bent a certain way where the bare wires touched.

 

[TPadden]

I switched over to a new bike back in August…wired it through the fuse box.

I don’t know what your new Yamaha is but if it has CANBUS the ECU computer will shut down circuits that exceed expected amperage (many circuits are limited to 5 amp draw) without blowing any fuzes. The circuits are re-energized either when the load is reduced or on restart. As Phil and others recommended try direct to battery pigtail…

Tom

 

[MidLife]

I don’t know what your new Yamaha is but if it has CANBUS the ECU computer will shut down circuits that exceed expected amperage (many circuits are limited to 5 amp draw) without blowing any fuzes. The circuits are re-energized either when the load is reduced or on restart. As Phil and others recommended try direct to battery pigtail…

Tom

Isn't the fuse box wired to the battery? Away from what the ECU can monitor?

 

[st11ray]

Isn't the fuse box wired to the battery? Away from what the ECU can monitor?

Yes. I don't know what I did but it works now. I just checked all connections and plugged everything back in......and we have heat! There must have been something not making a good connection. I just don't understand why it wasn't working when I had power at the female power lead.

 

[Uncle Phil]

Yes. I don't know what I did but it works now. I just checked all connections and plugged everything back in......and we have heat! There must have been something not making a good connection. I just don't understand why it wasn't working when I had power at the female power lead.

Sometimes you just rejoice that it works even when you don't know why!

 

[Andrew Shadow]

The scourge of intermittent electrical problems, what a pain they are.

It is possible that you didn't push one of the connectors together tightly enough to make a good contact when it wasn't working. Doesn't seem likely however as you tried several more times afterwards and with different gear and it still didn't work. Raises the possibility that there is a loose connection lurking somewhere in the system that made contact just to confound and frustrate you, and that will behave itself no matter how many times you test it again just to further irritate you. Now that it works you will never know- Until it fails again.

I don't mind electrical problems so much, but I very much loath intermittent electrical problems.

 

[MidLife]

........ I very much loath intermittent electrical problems.

May be prudent to ride with a spare controller handy!

 

[Andrew Shadow]

May be prudent to ride with a spare controller handy!

This assumes that the failure is with the controller. Thus the problem with intermittent failures- Its cause remains a mystery until it fails again long enough to be discovered. Until then all parts of the chain can be blamed equally, or not.

 

[Uncle Phil]

May be prudent to ride with a spare controller handy!

Something I did do along those lines -
When I had a W&S controller fail, I cut the wires off and soldered them together so I had a 'connectors' without a 'controller'.
It doesn't take up much space, but if I'm on the road and have an issue, I can pretty quickly determine if it's the gear or the controller.
If it's the controller, I can use the 'spare' to get heat (I wired an on/off switch in the main circuit to cut off the heat if I get too hot).
Easy enough to check the circuit with a test light or meter.
If you are on a long ride in the cold, heated gear functioning can make a big difference in comfort and safety.

 

[Daboo]

This assumes that the failure is with the controller. Thus the problem with intermittent failures- Its cause remains a mystery until it fails again long enough to be discovered. Until then all parts of the chain can be blamed equally, or not.

Something I did do along those lines -
When I had a W&S controller fail, I cut the wires...
If you are on a long ride in the cold, heated gear functioning can make a big difference in comfort and safety.

Both of these gentlemen point out something we need to keep in the back of our minds. Heated gear can fail at any time, and in different places. Always have a fallback to good old-fashioned layers to get you to your home safely.

Back in 2017, I was coming home from a workout. My left hand glove quit working. The temperature was 25F. I had about a 20 minute ride to get home, but I was close to frostbite by the time I pulled into the driveway. The problem by the way, was not in the glove, but in the last couple inches of the wiring harness leading from the jacket to the glove. If I had a pair of old-fashioned, out-of-date, non-techie winter gloves with me in my pannier...I'd have been just fine.

Trouble-shooting and soldering is great...in the garage. But when you aren't there, you need a backup plan to get home.

Chris

 

[Uncle Phil]

In my experience (as I stated in another thread), the failures are usually the gloves not the jackets (at least if they are not the microwire versions).
I always pack an extra set of heated gloves but I also have heated grips on all 4 of my ST1100s.
Occasionally a connector in the jacket liner will fail, but I've cut those apart and rigged them on the road.
If you have heated grips and heated gloves, you up your 'redundancy' quite nicely.
And after market heated grips are pretty reasonably priced if your alternator can handle them.

 

[dduelin]

I have had a couple of failures in the wires to gloves. These were in a Gerbings jacket with lots of years and miles of service. Each time I made small openings in the liner so I could identify the section of wire with the break and then splice in a repair. These breaks were in the area of the arm pit where I surmise a bend that was flexed with each up and down movement of my arm eventually fatigued the stranded wire harness. I have also suffered total loss of heat from similar metal fatigue breaks where the battery harness exits from under the left front of the seat. I now always carry a spare battery harness and replace them every three years or so. When I had the last glove connection break two years ago I went ahead and invested in a new Warm & Safe Gen 4 jacket.