How I got to ride in this hot southwest summer this year - 2023

[SkipH]

It's been hotter than heck here is Henderson this year. Sometimes temp reaching 117 degrees on my back porch, in fact, it's been over 110 here for almost 5 weeks this year. I wanted to go riding- but in this heat?

I read that some guy made a cooling shirt by sewing vinyl tubing to a tee shirt about 10-15 years ago. There are people still selling complete systems, not that expensive, but they run all the time and have small ice coolers so at most, they last about an hour.

So I go to ebay, type in Cooling vests, and got some hits, a full shirts and military vests, Bought 1 of each and then bought a 16 qt Colman cooler that fits on the back seat of the Can Am and a aquarium little water pump and some vinyl tubing and a bunch of little plastic fittings and timer. I built up one system and put 10 lbs of ice and 30 oz of water and hooked everything up and went for a ride.

The cooling vest is a working out great! I sat on the trike down at the lake drinking a Pepsi and eating a bag of gorp and it was 118 degrees! Now I find I can ride 4 hours on @15 lbs of ice@ $2.99 a bag.

The disconnect fittings were the hardest to figure out, getting the right size disconnects can run a retired person broke.

Was it worth all the work? Hell yes.

 

[BLUEKNIGHT911]

:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:... DIY'ers Rule..... Mike

 

[BamaJohn]

It's been hotter than heck here is Henderson this year. Sometimes temp reaching 117 degrees on my back porch, in fact, it's been over 110 here for almost 5 weeks this year. I wanted to go riding- but in this heat?

I read that some guy made a cooling shirt by sewing vinyl tubing to a tee shirt about 10-15 years ago. There are people still selling complete systems, not that expensive, but they run all the time and have small ice coolers so at most, they last about an hour.

So I go to ebay, type in Cooling vests, and got some hits, a full shirts and military vests, Bought 1 of each and then bought a 16 qt Colman cooler that fits on the back seat of the Can Am and a aquarium little water pump and some vinyl tubing and a bunch of little plastic fittings and timer. I built up one system and put 10 lbs of ice and 30 oz of water and hooked everything up and went for a ride.

The cooling vest is a working out great! I sat on the trike down at the lake drinking a Pepsi and eating a bag of gorp and it was 118 degrees! Now I find I can ride 4 hours on @15 lbs of ice@ $2.99 a bag.

The disconnect fittings were the hardest to figure out, getting the right size disconnects can run a retired person broke.

Was it worth all the work? Hell yes.

Good job McGiver! I have a "Comp Cooler" brand (www.compcooler.com) of cooling vest that saves me on temps above 90F. It has a cooler on the back seat with an insulated surround; bait well pump; reostat on the dash to control run time/intervals. I find that I'm ready to get off the trike about the same time the ice runs out. When the pump kicks "on", it makes me go "ahhhhhhh"

 

[pidjones]

I thought the dessert Southwest was perfect for evaporative cooling.

 

[canamjhb]

I thought the dessert Southwest was perfect for evaporative cooling.

It is. I use one when it gets to 95 or so. But it's comfortable for only an hour and a half +or-. Then it needs to be re-soaked at a pit stop. In my old age, even with a cooling vest, I don't go out when it's above 100. Congrats to Skip for his ingenuity and riding spirit!!!

 

[Brainsprain]

This thread was from summer 2023, but I thought I'd chime in having just seen it.

I bought the Compcooler, and it worked more or less ok around town. However, my girlfriend and I were traveling out West in the summer of 2022. It would work for about an hour at best. Then we had to stop and add ice.

The problem is that when you stopped, you had to remember to turn it off, or it blew a pipe from the pump to the jackets. No indicator if it was on or off. When we were riding toward Joshua Tree on I-10 when she said, "This thing's pouring water." Stopped, only to find a fitting was missing somewhere on I-10.

We trashed it and went to evaporative cooling by just soaking our clothes and riding jacket liners. That worked for over an hour in 110-degree heat. Of course, that idea only works marginally well in the humid East.

The guy who was marketing the Compcooler systems went out of business.