Riding in the cold sucks. Numb fingers, biting wind, and an ice-cold butt make for a miserable time behind the wheel.
So what can you do? Bundling up is a start, but what about adding a UTV cab heater? How well do they really work? Do they actually keep you warm?
Let’s find out.
Your side-by-side is a major investment no matter what you use it for.
Whether you hit the trail every weekend you’re free, getting tons of chores done every day, or a mix of both, leaving it in the garage because of freezing weather feels like a waste.
If you do try to ride instead, you’ll be faced with unpleasant rides and miserable chores.
That’s why turning your UTV into a year-round machine is so valuable. You’ll get a whole extra season’s worth of rides and work out of it every year, if you can just make it comfortable enough to sit in the cab.
That’s where UTV cab heaters come in.
Can you trust a UTV cab heater to keep you warm year-round?
They work the same way your car’s heater works. They use the coolant lines to take your engine’s heat and send it to the heat exchanger to get blown out into your cab.
That means you only get the heat your engine produces. And if you want to make the most of it, you need windshields, doors, and a roof to seal up your cab!
It’s important to keep in mind that UTV engines are relatively small, and UTV cab heaters aren’t magic. It’s not gonna feel like you lit a fire under the dash as soon as you turn it on.
Your cab heater will only start to spit out warm air after your engine runs for a while. If it’s especially cold outside, it might not warm up at all while the engine’s idling. You can help your heater spit out heat faster by adding an idle flow pump and a quick-start flow valve.
Those additions will help, but how warm you feel in your cab really depends on how much your engine’s working (so get driving!) and how sealed your cab is. That’s why a good cab enclosure is so important too.
The main factors that affect the efficiency of a UTV cab heater are:
Let’s check them out.
If you’re gonna get a UTV cab heater, you need a cab enclosure. But what kind of cab enclosure works best?
You can get a hard cab enclosure or a soft cab enclosure.
For insulation against the cold, nothing beats a hard cab setup.
Get yourself a polycarbonate front windshield, rear windshield, doors, and a roof and you’ll see what we mean. Plastic and poly don’t let heat through the way a fabric soft cab does. Our hard cab components seal tight to your frame too, so you don’t have to worry about air sneaking through the gaps.
Soft cabs work well too, and are great if you have a tighter budget. Just don’t expect them to work as well as a hard cab.
So, how does engine size affect your cab heat? It’s pretty simple: the bigger your engine, the more heat it puts out and the more your heater can pump into your cab.
If you have a smaller engine, you shouldn’t expect your cab to warm up if you’re not moving around and getting some revs in (our grille covers can help!), but you’ll have better luck with a 1000 cc or turbocharged machine.
If your coolant is low or not flowing properly, you won’t get good heat to your cab. In fact, you may have overheating issues come summer.
Likewise, if your heater core gets covered with dirt, dust, or mud, it’s not going to be able to exchange heat efficiently.
Keep everything clean and maintained and you’ll have a warmer cab.
There are lots of good benefits of adding a cab heater. The main reason you want a cab heater is because it’s cold in winter. It can also take the edge off chilly fall or spring mornings or evenings. But the big picture is that a cab heater makes the ride season longer. There will be more days where you can get work done or enjoy a ride if your cab is comfortable.
A heater can clear frost and fog from your windshield too—super handy since you don’t want to use a scraper on a poly windshield. Better visibility makes whatever you’re doing easier and safer.
A heater is an all-around improvement that you won’t regret.
You can’t just grab any random heater and slap it in your machine. You need a custom-built solution.
Lucky for you, we’ve got heater kits for tons of different makes and models. And the best part is that they’re easy to get installed. They come with everything you need and are as close to being plug and play as you can get.
Check out our Cab Heaters:
We have even more cab heaters than that. Check out all of our UTV Cab Heaters.
You know what you need to stay warm this winter: a great cab and enclosure paired with a custom-built heater.
And when you invest in making your cab more comfortable, you get more ride time out of your machine every year.
And that’s how you can make your life easier and ride more with a SuperATV cab heater.
