This weekend, Zoë was the lucky recipient of a variety of mods, installed in traditional ghetto style by your humble narrator. In brief, I added heated grips, a standard 12v accessory socket, and a small XM Radio head unit. The XM was just something I wanted to try out, but the heated grips have been more and more necessary over the last few weeks. Today there was snow on the ground when I woke up. It was gone by noon, but still, it's getting quite a bit colder here than I like, and every little bit against hypothermia is a good thing.

Anyway. The heated grips (from Dual-Star) were the first to go on. I wired them up the boring normal way, with a three-position switch for HI-OFF-LOW, as described in the installation manual that came with them. The more swanky among you would no doubt use their Heat-Troller for fully adjustable grips, but I figured I'd try it the simple way first, and it should be an easy matter to wire a Heat-Troller in if I decide I need it.

I was unable to get the existing grips off without destroying them; luckily, I'd anticipated that and picked up a pair of cheap new grips at Everett Powersports last week. Getting the new grips on over the heat elements was easy; remember to rub the inside of the grips and the outside of the elements with a thin solution of soapy water, and you'll do fine. Then give a good 24 hours for the water to all evaporate away, or you'll have grips that slide around on you. I didn't epoxy them into place, as some would recommend; they seem pretty damn well fixed by friction alone, and the bar ends help to hold them as well.

The control switch was simply zip-tied to a fairing support strut on the left side of the bike; it's well hidden but easy to get to. The power for the grips comes from the wiring I ran for my aux lighting; the total draw of aux lights and heat elements on hi is well under the 10A rating of the inline fuse I used, and the relay was rated to 30A, so no worries. I did have to run another ground line back to the battery, which is starting to look like a snake's nest of wires, but what can ya do?

The grips are amazing. Even just a little heat goes a long way. I've only used them on LOW so far, and they were plenty warm enough for me.

Here you can see the switch for the heated grips. Surprisingly, this mounting method seems very secure and stable. Probably not such a good option on most bikes though.

The 12v socket was a cheap model from my local autoparts store; I chose it because it claimed to be "all-weather" and had a spring-loaded door to cover the socket when not in use. Another very simple mod; I just ziptied the switch to the frame on the right side of the bike, above the engine. When something's plugged into the socket, it does stick out about an inch from the side of the bike, but it's forward of my knee and out of the way. Wires ran along the frame underneath the tank and back to the battery. Since I want to be able to run this socket whether the bike is on or off, I ran it straight to the battery, and of course added an inline fuse on the positive wire. This'll let me run my GPS or XM radio off battery power, and give me a way to top up my cell on longer trips if necessary.

The socket (with the cover closed) is dead center in this picture. You can also see the new front turn signals I installed last week and never wrote about, replacing the stock signals that I cracked in my first-week drop.

The XM is another cheapie; I guess they're clearing out obsolete models to make room for shiny new ones, so I managed to find a Roady2 reciever for $14 at Staples. It's pretty much a self-contained unit, about 4"x2.5", with external ports for an antenna, headphones, and a power jack. It's an elegant little thing; there are, of course, some design elements that can be improved (and have been, in the updated model) but for my purposes, it's more than enough.

I thought about picking up a Hoon Hardware RoadyHolder to mount the thing, but felt a little squeamish about paying three times as much for the mounting hardware as for the radio itself. It seemed like a good mounting scheme, though, and so I decided to hit Home Depot, wander the aisles, and see what I could adapt. It turned out that some braces used for framing were very close to the size I wanted; all I had to do was drill a few holes in one, bend it from its usual 90 degree angle to about 70, and I was good to go.

The bracket is mounted to the top plate of my front brake fluid reservoir; I drilled holes through the bracket to line up with the reservoir securing screws, removed the screws, put the bracket in place, and screwed them back in. I then affixed the car-mounting adaptor that came with the Roady to the bracket, and dropped the Roady in.

The Roady's antenna is a small magnetic thing, about an inch square, on the end of about 15' of antenna wire. I routed it back inside the tail section and affixed it to the frame under the rear end of the seat. It seems that even with the seat in place, and me on the bike, the reception is crystal clear, though the diagnostic menu says I'm really only getting ground reception rather than sat reception. Ah well; long as I get the music, I'm good.

Here's the XM mounted and active. The top plug is the power adaptor, which runs down to the socket on the right side of the frame. The bottom plug is the antenna. In between is the space for my headphones, which will run straight to the unit. I hope to make an inline volume control I can plug the 'phones into, as the unit doesn't really have a volume dial of its own; also, unless I remember to unplug before getting off the bike, I'm apt to pull something off, so having a longer lead on the 'phones might be beneficial.

One thing to keep in mind: the Roady2 is not at all waterproof. When it's raining, I'll have to stick a Ziploc bag over it, or something. Ah well. Ghetto engineering can only take me so far.