In order to avoid opening a new topic, I will continue right here.
Yesterday I spent five hours trying to fit Oxford heated handgrips. I have purchased two types of handgrips: Oxford, velcro based purchased on amazon.co.uk that can be removed and Saito I bought in Graz/Austria in Louis (
www.louis.de) store. Finally I did it with help of my girlfriend.
First I had to tear apart the met in box. Of course, my cat managed to turn over the box that consequently fell to the ground and
of course it broke the connector of the 12V lighter socket so I had to fix it somehow. Also, Kymco factory sloppy job was fixed by using glue to fix the insulation underneath the met in box that was not glued properly.
Another problem was the fact that the manual I had is for People 250 (like Jprestonian has) and People S 250. However, there is a difference in certain parts but the manual does not address them. For example, I could not disassemble the front light assembly according to instructions.
After taking out the met in box, I tried to take out the part of the fuel intake cap, but there are so many plastic parts that should be removed that I gave up. Instead, I concentrated on finding the route to pass the cables upwards towards the steering wheel. I have removed plastic side caps, then the plastic cap behind which there is cooling fluid flask and the plastic cap that hides VIN number. Then we managed to pass the flexible iron rod with a lot of effort, because there is not much space between iron frame
and plastic parts, tie the cables to the iron rod and pass them upwards.
Then we had to do the same passing the connector cables close to left and right handgrips. This took a lot of time, eventhough there is a lot of space compared to other scooters and we managed to do it without disassembling the front and rear covers, it somewhat looked like doing a laparoscopic surgery - we used screwdrivers, long thin wooden sticks etc.
I have hooked up + to the 12V electric socket, while - I drew directly from the battery. The socket is not in the circuit until the
key is in the ignition, while on my previous Beverly 200 the socket was on also when the key was out. This is important because now I cannot forget to turn off the grips when I leave the scooter, even if the switch remains in "ON" position.
Finally, there was a lot of fiddling with the wires, I had a problem because the part where the fuse is is quite wide and could not be passed through narrow channels between plastic parts of the scooter and iron frame.
It took also some time to connect the on/off switch to the rearview mirror and tie the cables neatly tucking them inside the steering.
(this is happy me after five hours of standing over the scooter...
)
Yesterday I have tried the new grips and I can tell you that eventhough they use around 2 A, compared to the regular heated handgrips that cannot be removed and that use 3-5 A, they heat much better and effect can be felt IMMEDIATELY, while the regular ones start slowly working after 4-5 minutes of being on. This is very important for us that use the scooter throughout the winter.
Also, this kind of added padding isolates the hand from the handlebar and even when they are off it is not so cold.
Additional benefit is that you can easily remove them during half of the year when you do not need them. What I do not like is the added padding because I have relatively small palms and I am slightly worried about the quality of the Velcro, eventhough a friend that has been using Oxford for a years says they look as good as new.
Tomorrow People has first inspection @ 3200 kms in the shop... almost 5 months on the road.
Keep you updated.
