DIY Heated Clothing – Part III

The aftermath. So, I ended up undoing a lot of what I had done. Go figure, all the DIY articles on the topic I read online were right, but I had to try improving their method otherwise I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

As it turns out, the sleeves got REALLY hot, resulting in my shutting off the clothing before the rest of me was warm, but that wasn’t too big of a problem. The biggest problem I incurred were the connections. Connecting the heated wire to the jacks were VERY finicky, even when I RTV’ed them sealed. The gloves resulted in a broken connection which made the whole setup invalid, so I eventually got rid of them and just used the jacket. The jacket worked really well, but I had to fix the sleeves.

What I replaced the jacket with was the jacket liner, essentially a vest. I did the liner itself so when I didn’t need the warming stuff, i wouldn’t have wires running up and down my jacket bothering me. I didn’t weave it through the jacket though, I went the extra long way and stitched it on the inside, this way you can’t see it except for the wires running to my accessory plug. I like this better, so I suppose I did eventually improve on the method slightly. Some more pics!

Here’s my jacket with the liner installed, see how it’s almost unnoticeable? =)

and here’s the inside of the liner exposed for all the world to see:

You’ll notice I skipped the area by the small of my back. Everyone else says this part gets the coldest, but I have a backrest on my bike for touring and comfort, so for me it doesn’t actually get cold at all. If you give it a go, however I recommend giving that a shot.