Garmin nuvi problem on bike

[Guest]

I have a Garmin Nuvi 765 that I use in my car and on my bike. Unit works fine in car, but when plugged into hard wired charger on bike it gets all kinds of errors at different times (can happen every 5 minutes or so... or go an hour just fine).

This is the charger I bought (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110448293026). Yeah.. it is a cheap piece of crap from China. Anyone know where I can get a better one?

It will be working fine, and then give these errors intermittenly:

• Will say power cord unplugged
• Accessory Plugged into Wrong Port
• Goes through the "sync" screen that happens when you plug it into a USB cord connected to computer.
• Randomly power cycles.

I have the charger hooked onto the accessory port of the bike. I've moved it directly to the battery before, but same problems.

It is some sort of voltage drop? Do I just have a bad charger? Anyone run into something like this?

[Doldrums]

I've been doing some digging. It seems you get what you pay for!

So, I'm thinking about getting this one instead: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002GU60CE

Anyone had success / failure with it?

Thanks,

Hugh

[jpaul]

I have a similar one.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001M09L20/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00
I'm actually on my third, I had two wired up last year, one for the GPS, and one for my MP3 player. There an extra switched lead in the headlight bucket that I used for one, and the other I hooked up to the accessory leads on the fuse bos. When I relocated the one unit to try to tidy up my installation, I hooked up the leads backwards and blew the fuses on them. Until I did that, they worked great.

[robertbarr]

I've had similar frustrations with a Nuvi 200 on the Bandit. I've read that the cause is vibration, but the unit will operate fine on battery alone. I've tried two USB-style chargers with a cigarette lighter source under the seat, and they're both pretty close to useless, even with the connection wrapped in foam & cable-tied. The tripmeter function is interrupted again and again, and it restarts itself in USB mode.

I like the reviews that Doldrums' unit got, especially the tip about disassembling the unit to secure the components in silicone or something similar. Thanks for posting that.

[posplayr]

A while back I was trying to improve my gas gauge and ended up using a Lo drop out regulator to supply about 500 milli-amps. Many of the pictures in the link are broken but you can still get an idea.
There was quite a bit of noise coming from the chopping in the R/R (either SERIES or SHUNT) that can aggravate any portable device which is switching between internal and external power.

http://www.thegsresources.com/_forum/showthread.php?t=161413&highlight=voltage+reference

PS I'm NOT selling these and can even find any of the information at this point.

attached is a picture of one installed in my gauge cluster to filter the power to my dash gauges

[Killer2600]

A: You get what you paid for, CCC (Cheap Chinese Crap) in this case.

B: How secure is the connection to the garmin, loose intermittent connection from vibration or other can cause your "errors" - Garmin uses proprietary cables and proper connection to the right pins differentiates a sync cable from a power cable from an unauthorized generic cable. Perhaps try securing the cable to gps and see if it behaves better.

[Doldrums]

After taking a trip with another guy who has a Nuvi this weekend (and reading a bit more on different threads here and elsewhere)... It really seems with the Nuvi you should use the Garmin proprietary plug and not the mini-usb.

However, that being said... I looked at the pins on my existing mini-usb... and they are slightly corroded. I think they are shorting out the GPS.

Time to upgrade cables. I don't think it is the bike... but the cables.

[hjfisk]

I have a NUVI that I use on my 1000, and had problems when it was mounted to the bars, I moved it to the clear window in the tank bag and no more problems works great.. I ran a acc. plug to the front of the bike and picked up power on the acc. poles of the fuse box.