HOW TO BUY HEATED KIT
It’s no good, we have to admit to ourselves that summer 2019 is gone and we are well and truly into the autumn. Heated kit it is then…
There’s no getting away from it, the summer is gone…
BIG SQUEEZE
Tight-fitting heated kit is vital, otherwise your precious heat will slip through the gap between body and heating filament. To get the best fit I recommend going down a size in jackets and even two sizes in vests. Keis kit is comparable in size to Dainese, so if you wear a size-48 Dainese jacket, try on a size-46 Keis jacket and a size-44 vest. If the size you’ve ordered is too small, we offer year-round returns for items that still have the original tags and packaging, and haven’t been worn on the bike. So it’s all pretty straightforward.
GET WIRED UP
For best results connect heated kit to your bike’s battery. Undo the two battery terminal screws, then screw back in through the eyelets in the cable provided, leaving everything else as it is. When the engine’s running, you’ll be able to power a suite of heated kit this way. However, don’t connect heated kit through a cigarette lighter/din socket – it will draw too much current. A dealer will charge £15 for the above.
WARM FINGERS
Heated gloves beat heated grips in any contest. That’s because grips don’t warm your fingers like heated gloves. A heating filament winds round each finger, creating all-over warmth and helping preserve feel and reaction times on cold, windy nights. I’d choose all-in-one gloves over heated inner gloves: double-layering inner and outers will always create bulk and reduce feel. Inners will also stretch out summer-gloves so they won’t fit properly without the inner inside them. Stick to your normal size when ordering all-in-one gloves.
CONNECTIONS MADE SIMPLE
Avoid cable complicatedness by buying heated kit from the same manufacturer. Then, instead of running a cable from your glove to the battery, you can connect the glove to cable ends hidden in the sleeve of your heated jacket. The same can be done with heated trousers, and boots. This means you can stop the bike, unplug a single cable and walk away. There are five connections in the £200 Keis J501 jacket: gloves, battery, trousers, and heat controller.
BATTERIES AND CHARGERS
If connecting to the bike’s battery all sounds a bit too difficult, get a separate powerbank. Storage capacity is measured in mah (milliamp hours), and you can buy powerbanks with various capacities. For reference, a typical smartphone battery is 3000mah. You’ll typically see 2600mah for gloves or heated insoles, and 5200mah for big kit – jackets and trousers. Expect two to three hours heating on medium setting for both batteries. Just don’t use the 2600mah to power your jacket. Some kit, like the Halvarssons neck warmer, is designed to be powered by a common or garden powerbank. USB cable included.