All things equal, I'd take the Gerbing jacket. There just seems to be more to it. It's thicker and seems to be a little better made. But I've had to return my fair share of Gerbing products..jacket 2X, gloves 3X, socks 1X. I bought the Hotwired jacket, pant liners, insoles and gloves on sale. Don't recall what I paid but I did end up returning the gloves a few weeks later because I couldn't deal with the loss of dexterity. I really like the idea of having the controller built into the gloves. Hopefully they will redesign the gloves some day and make them a little thinner. Since all things are not equal (price and warranty), I highly recommend the hotwired stuff.
Wondering what gloves you use with the hotwired jacket liner. How are the controlled etc? The hotwired gloves DO eventually break in, but it tales a very long time. They are great though for my girl on the back of the bike. They don't need to break in, just be warm. And they are warm.
Rich - The wiring inside the old Gerbing jackets is what I would call 'lamp cord' - just twisted two wire. If you look at the inside of the jacket near the bottom, you will see a vertical seam (on one side or the other) that has been whip stitched (over the top instead of from beneath). You get a seam ripper and carefully pick the stitches apart which gives you access to the 'innards'. You trace the wires from the glove connections (you can do this by feeling of them) and you will find they all connect to one of the input connectors (mine has two coax ones). In the older jackets, one of the external connectors went to a pants connector and the other one the jacket/gloves connector. You have to 'desolder' the glove connector and solder the glove wires to other coax input. You may have to add some wire for the glove connector inside the jacket so the glove circuit is not so short. I use regular heat shrink tubing to insulate the new 'joints' after I solder them. It's handy if you have some 'extra' Gerbing harnesses laying around for the wire, etc. I've replaced the glove connectors on one jacket when they failed with the ones from an original glove harness (actually sturdier connections). On the 'new' used jacket I got, I replaced the SAE jacket connectors with coax connectors since all my controllers are coax. You just have to pay attention and be careful with the soldering iron! ;-)
I use Gerbing T5's with the Hotwired jacket. Good point about the gloves being good for a passenger.
Thanks Uncle Phil!!! I'll give it a shot.
