Nov 15, 2010

Gerbing Heated Jacket Liner

On a recent cold weather ride in Northern Ontario, I suffered serious failures on my one year old Gerbing jacket liner. Temperatures were several degrees below the freezing mark.

First problem occurred when putting my Aerostich jacket on. I was holding on to the right side glove connector to guide it through the sleeve opening, and it came right off in my hand. The wire separated from the connector right at the molding. No chance to resolder.

The heated hand grips were still working but it was cold enough to make the back of my hands cold on this long highway ride in the early hours of the morning.

Then the left heated glove stopped working. The wire inside the insulation broke at the molding, but did not completely come off. In the picture, it may not be obvious, but the wire is bent over at an odd angle. Now both hands were cold. The heated hand grips just can't keep up when riding on the highway at -4C for a number of hours.



Then the left heated hand grip stopped working - broken wire. Quite unusual. I would expect more troubles with the right side, where the wires flex with each application of the throttle.

The heated grips had been preventing the onset of frostbite, but just barely. Now my left hand was without any heat at all. It wasn't long before my fingers were painful and stiff. I took my left hand off the the handlebar and placed it between me and the tankbag, out of the wind blast. It helped some, but my hand was still uncomfortably cold. The right wasn't much better. My legs were cold and there wasn't much heat under the liner either. There was just my jacket's shell between the heated liner and the frozen air. I had been shivering for some time.

I pulled over at a Tim Hortons to warm up. Once stopped, I picked out my heated pant liner and heated socks. I needed to get my core temperature up or the ride was done. Once inside, I ordered a chili and hot chocolate. It was around three in the morning with many hours of cold riding before the sun rose.

I put on the heated pant liner and heated socks, which plugged into the bottom of the heated jacket liner. I then put a sweater on top of the liner in hopes of keeping some of the heat in. After finishing my food, I went back at it.

No sense plugging in the heated gloves anymore. Off I go with my single heated grip and heated gear running. I felt better but the left hand suffered. I had to ride with it tucked behind the tankbag or risk frostbite.

I rode like this for hours. Eventually, the sun came up and temperatures inched above the freezing mark. The pain went away, but the cold never did.

By that day's nightfall, I was in warmer air south of Georgian Bay and it wasn't as cold. I was mad as hell, however, to be the victim of an early failure of a brand I once trusted.

My old Gerbing served me for over ten years, without a single problem for at least six of those years. After serving me valiantly for so long, it did eventually begin to suffer broken wires. I fixed them all myself, even though Gerbing offers a lifetime warranty on the wiring to the original owner.

A warranty isn't much good when one is freezing one's ass off in the middle of the night. I would rather fix a problem myself rather than mail it back to the United States, wait a few months, then pay outrageous brokerage fees upon return of the garment because they ignored my request to return via post instead of the hyper-expensive courier companies. (That subject being a whole other lengthy post)

And I can't do without a heated liner for months, summer or winter.

But after being stranded in the cold one too many times, I invested in another Gerbing. Big mistake. The new ones are now made in China and are of poor quality.

Others issues have irked me about the new designs. The jacket heat circuit and the glove heat circuit are now separate, forcing a purchase of a dual controller, or a splitter to run both circuits from one controller. Not a good idea from the standpoint of having more connections, which equates to more potential trouble spots.



Well guess what? I had problems with this splitter circuit within weeks of buying the jacket liner - right before the Iron Butt Rally. The heated jacket liner quit working while the gloves continued to provide heat. This problem was quite obviously the fault of the splitter. Sure enough, moving the connections caused the problem to move also, following the bad leg of the splitter.

I returned the splitter to the dealer where it was bought. It was returned to me from the distributor with an explanation that it was not faulty, and that I should send my jacket liner back to the company. Well I tried it again, thinking they may have just given me a new one.

Nope, they gave me the same crappy splitter with one branch providing no power. I had to purchase another (overpriced) splitter and THROW OUT the original one which was only weeks old. As I suspected when I saw this new design, there are now more things with which to have trouble.

So all in all, I give Gerbings a failing grade. I will send the "new" liner for warranty, but I can never rely on it again. It will ride along as a backup set to my next heated clothing gear - appropriately called "Gears."

http://www.gearscanada.com/index.html

Made in Canada, this gear got a positive review from a friend. I shall be obtaining a liner and gloves shortly. Review to follow in the new year.

11 comments:

  1. Check out that Gears stuff carefully, I had a chance to see the vest and it was lets say a bit underwhelming. Made in china too.

    Contact gerbings directly (not the lousy Cdn. distributor) and ask to speak to Fernando Belair. He is the marketing/sales mgr. and long time rider of BMWs and others.

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  2. Thane - A high-quality, reliable, and durable brand to look at is Warm & Safe. No affiliation, just a satisfied customer.

    See: http://www.warmnsafe.com/

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  3. Also try www.12voltclothing.com for Warm & Safe gear.
    Not made in China,
    And the Heat trollers are made in the USA!!

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  4. i am the last person to defend gerbing after how they treated me and Sue after helping them out in the early days when they sold our heat-troller. i can tell you all sorts of stories. but even when you try to make a good product, one guy in the factory can screw it up. we had 500 pairs of gloves made bad because the factory that made the wire, made it wrong. they had trouble extruding over the kevlar thread we demanded. the samples were fine, the first shipment was fine. then they decded without telling us to make it with a half the strength kevlar, and they started breaking. crap chinese? nope. made in florida. then the crap connectors from skokie. and yes a problem with a chinese cable maker that we stopped using. maybe 1% of a run of cables had bad soldering to the connector. maybe one guy in the line not knowing the job and then no oversight. i understand what you are saying. we had a wilber shock collapse on us in montenegro. they said it never happened before and they fixed it. only to have that one come with a bad seal so all the gas and fluide was gone when we got it. then the shop that recharged it did not catch the leak in the seal. what am i now using on my bike in europe, not the wilber. i won't trust it. my white power is not as good but it never let me down.
    so my point is that i am not trying to defend them but things happen. if this was our product, i would be saying this also to you. i am sorry you had this experiance and i fully understand your feelings about trust.

    Mike
    Warm & Safe Heated Gear

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  5. Thank you all. I appreciate the advice and comments. I am an MTF member and may have to investigate WnS.

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  6. I was told Gears was made in Canada. I sure want to buy as much product made in North America as I can. This is a premium item, expensive. Function is critical. I know all spatulas and microwaves come from there, but I don't want my heated clothing made there.

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  7. I checked the Gears stuff out at the TO bike show on Friday..... Made in India. I stand corrected.

    Don't know about the final quality as I don't own any Gears product. At this point, I'll stick with the Gerbings.

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  8. I have to agree with Thane when it comes to Gerbing. The quality of their stuff has really gone down hill. I've been using their battery powered gloves for non-riding times. The Chinese made batteries were redesigned, or maybe farmed out to a different manufacturer, and they're garbage. I've had multiple batteries fail within months of receiving them.

    Last fall, the wiring in one of the gloves failed (only about a year old, and not abused. Gerbing's service was great: they sent me a whole new pair of gloves, complete with new batteries and charger. The switch on one battery failed with a couple of months. The switch on the other, only 6 months old, is now starting to fail.

    It seems Gerbing's primary consideration reducing costs, not maintaining quality.

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  9. So what did you end up going with to replace your Gerbings? I've been looking for a while at everything from Gerbings, to WnS, to Powerlet, and now considering the Gears stuff (which is certainly priced right and you can't beat the shipping within Canada).

    Joe

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  10. I have yet to replace my Gerbing gear. I personally soldered new connections to the broken glove circuits and so far after a season of riding, my soldering has held. I did not send my Gerbing back as I have been burned in the past with brokerage fees on warranty returns.

    I once mailed a product to Aerostich and they repaired it and couriered it to me and the bill for brokerage fees was almost $100. It is too much of a hassle to return products for warranty across the border.

    To repair my connectors, I paid for extension cables from my local dealer and cut off the ends I needed. More work for me but I do very good soldering work so I know it is done right.

    Incidentally, Gerbing is now bringing their product manufacturing back to America. Here is a link:
    http://gerbing.com/News/recentNews.php

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  11. This is the type of information I’ve long been trying to find. Thank you for writing this information. Heated Gloves

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