One of my customers melted two 12v armatures by running heated grips! Duh!
I did run Oxford Hot Hands 'wraps' on my A10 for several winters using the standard E3L and a DVR at 12v though CB - 34W load as I recall, and that was OK with a 35W globe, and then LEDs later on to be on the safer side. Have done the same on cold days on other bikes using the same config.
(Then I bought expensive gloves with batteries . . . until one burnt a half-crown sied hole in the back of my right hand, whose scar is still visible 2 years later. Never again - that hurt, a lot!)
Rex' point is well-made, but 25 years of DVRs on standard dyns running at 12v, and 10+ years before that using an early JG device, makes me reasonably comfortable that nothing too terrible is going to happen. Yes, a few revisits to the dyns, owing to mechanical mayhem once or twice, and wires off the comm in another, but given the mileage, I'm not whining. Never had a field coil melt down though.
I also had the wires fail at the comm on a '12v' armature, and it really and truly hadn't been overloaded as you have to respect that 5A rating pretty carefully. Never knew why that one died, but there we go.
I expect the cost of the lot of it over a quarter of a century is coming up to about the cost of an Alton . . . but I promise myself I WILL get one of them one of these days just to see. No good being one-eyed about these things!
