power supply

Does anyone run heated grips and phone charger on a wee cb500

I only have the heated grips, but I bet someone else has a phone charger as well.

The phone charger won't consume anywhere near as much power as a the heated grips (unless it is *really* crap and gets hot!), so I wouldn't think there will be a problem with having both.

I have had problems with charging when using the heated grips but only if my journey is exclusively through town (where the revs don't really get high enough to supply enough power to stop the headlight draining the battery, let alone the grips as well).

If you go on a 'normal' journey (ie. not just weaving in and out of traffic all the time) you won't have a problem IMHO.

I would suggest that you put both the phone charger and the heated grips on a ignition-switched supply (via a relay) so you can't leave either switched on and run the battery down.

Providing your charging system and battery are in good order heated grips shouldn't be a problem.
As previously mentioned if you are stuck in traffic then switch them off.
I used to run heated grips, a heated jacket and a phone charger as well as the lights on all the time.
I did cheat a bit by fitting the charging system and battery from the cbr1100xx super blackbird though.

You might get a little peace of mind from exchanging the rear light bulb to a LED-type. A filament rearlight consumes 5W/21W, a LED rearlight consumes nowt/5W. A step in the right direction...