I installed hotgrips on 2000 bandit 600s Saturday. Took 1 hour to get old grips off, new grips fitted and then epoxied in correct place. It then took 1 hour to remove fairing, speedo, & headlight assembly. It then took another 1 hour to run wiring harness, wire tied everything neatly, mount variable switch with led on left lower fairing, solder & shrink tube everything. Then it took 1 hour to remount everything and finish wire tie variable switch wiring. Total time was 4 hours and I took my time for a really clean installation. Fairing dissassembly & reassembly took 2 hours which I could easily save 1/2 & hour on and if I had to do it for a friend I could probably do it in 2-3 hours.
The only issue I ran into is I had reverse polarity when I wired variable switch to open marker connector in headlight harness near left headlight that Paul pointed out for me ( thanks Paul). I wired hot (red from variable control) to black, I should have wired hot to brown. I noticed this after I turned key on and led glowed yellow with variable switch in off position and grips getting hot. I went to variable control maker website and easliy found out that if wired reverse polarity led light is yellow, wired correctly light is red. I rewired and led is red and all was good.
Paul felt wiring a heavier gage direct to battery and using marker harnes for relay would be wise. I felt marker wiring could handle load and I am a fairly lazy guy made it easy to just wire diect to marker harness. Paul's way has good merit. I will give feed back later if this was a good choice.
I went out Sunday for a short run, temp was 50 degrees here in Cleveland and I ran variable control at a little under 1/2 power using midweight gloves and was very warm. I tried full for awhile but was way to hot. Full I am guessing will be good at around 35 degrees. I was worried about epoxy softening (I did use recommended epoxy) and that wasn't an issue. Finish looks very stock and switch installation looks like stock item. The grips are a little firmer than stock and are slightly larger in diameter than stock (my plastic throttle cramp buster is snugger fit, but wroks well). I paid $131 thru lockitt.com (that included shipping) + epoxy, wire ties, and shrink tubing (all from a Home Depot). Total was $140 max and basically a 3 hour install on a Saturday afternoon.
I feel that is was a well thought out product and installation instructions are complete and with web support allow the average mechanically inclined person to do this safely.
rb