Don't Let Cold Weather Scare You Off Your Bike this Season
You know how frozen you can feel riding a motorcycle in cold weather without heated gear. Imagine flying in an open cockpit plane, in December, leaving from Minneapolis, Minnesota. A pilot tells how a Gerbing's heated jacket plugged into the plane’s cigarette lighter kept him cozy. He wore layers and advises that, when you wear more than one layer and plan to fly for three hours, you should stay away from the coffee. Read the whole story here.
You probably don’t pilot open cockpit airplanes, but I bet you ride even when the temperature drops. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we can ride for pleasure or commute via motorcycle most of the year if we have heated gear. At Eagle Leather, we have heated gear from insoles and sock liners, to pants and jackets, to gloves. You can choose heated liners, heated vests, or a full set of heated clothing, depending on how you ride during the colder months.
In general, heated gear uses energy from your motorcycle battery. Special filaments convert the electrical energy to heat. Insulation, such as Thinsulate, keeps in the heat. Some items, such as socks and gloves, are available with both a connection to the bike battery and their own 12-volt batteries. You might use the independent battery when you’re hunting ducks from a blind or ice fishing, for instance.
Gerbing's heated gear is either all the way on, or off. So, sometimes you get too warm. You can turn the gear off and then plug it in again when you get cold. But that isn’t the safest way to ride. You can be distracted as you turn off the heat to your gear. You might get drowsy when you are too warm, or forget to turn on your gear and get hypothermic. A better solution is a thermostat, an option you can buy at Eagle Leather. Then you can set the temperature you want and forget it.
With the right gear, we can ride through the cold months, and we have an added bonus—if we ever want to fly in an open cockpit plane, we’ve got the gear for the trip.
We’ve got some brand new Gerbing's heated gear that will extend your motorcycling pleasure well into the winter months. Both the jacket and the pants rely on Gerbing’s Microwire® technology. The micro-sized heating fibers of the Coreheat12 Thermovelocity System are powered by a simple connection to your motorcycle's DC power system. You can connect to your 12-volt accessory outlet with the 12-volt adapter plug or you can correct directly to the motorcycle battery with the battery harness. Both the adapter plug and the harness are included. Gerbing's supports a lifetime warranty on the heating elements.
Both jacket and pants are made of 330-denier Cordura for durability, with a polyurethane coating, waterproof zippered pockets and heat-sealed seams to protect you from rain and snow. The jacket and pants integrate, and the pants have a single power distribution at the hem that can connect to heated insoles.
The pants have an easy-on design with side leg zippers and protect you with ballistic-grade Cordura and removable CE-rated Knox armor at the knees. reflective strips make you more visible in the dark. Gerbing's has new gloves this year, too, for women and for men.
To get the most out of your heated gear, you'll also want to pick up a temperature controller. This dual temp controller can control two items, for example, a jacket liner and gloves on two different settings. You can also add a third item by putting the main body on one setting and the hands on a different setting. If you are just looking for one setting, this single temp controller will do the trick!
Yet, there’s no denying it: Unless you plan to ride exclusively around the Southern United States, you’ll face some chilly winters. And even before it...
