how do i fit heated grips on YZF600 thundercat 1997

[aj1soad]

im in the middle of trying to fit heated grips on my mates thundercat. i dont know where to connect the 12V lead to. i didnt want to connect it up directly to the battery. when i fitted them on my fazer 600 i had 3 places spaces where there was a switch live in the fuse box but on the thundercat there isnt anywhere spare to solder it on. could i just solder the 12v to an existing wire in the fuse box?

[G]

An existing live-when-running fuse with spare capacity should be ok - just make sure you're not going to add too much to it.
Ideally you wire in a fuse and relay so that it's on it's own circuit.

[aj1soad]

well the wires for the heated grips has a fuse in it. there isnt any spare switch live wires in the fuse box so ill have to solder it onto another wire or use a live from the brake wire or something:S

[weasley]

The neat way to do it is to run a relay off of an existing switched live, so you can use direct battery power to run the grips, switched by the relay. IIRC the 97 Cat has only 4 fuse positions, all in use. Later Cats got a bigger fuse box to accommodate wiring for an alarm.

Remember, if you are splicing into an existing circuit you are adding the heated grip load to the load on that circuit, so the fuse on place may not be able to run your grips as well as whatever else it is supposed to protect. Using the relay approach above adds virtually no extra load to the fuse and puts the heated grips' significant load directly on the battery.
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Yamaha XJ600 | Yamaha YZF600R Thundercat | KTM 990 SMT | BMW F900XR TE