power to my gps

[dallio]

i mounted a garmin nuvi on my HD ultra classic and i have a lighter in the fairing but when i plugged it in it would not charge my gps. the red indicator light was on but the gps would not charge. do i have to wire it direct to my battery?

[Prairiehammer]

Do not wire 12 volt directly to the Garmin without the knock down transformer that is built into the cigarette lighter plug. If you cut off the male cig lighter plug and run the pigtail directly to the Garmin from a 12 volt source, you will most likely damage the GPS unit.

Perhaps the cord is bad. Does the nüvi work with that power cord in any other vehicle cig lighter power outlet?

[dallio]

i have not tried that. i will check and see if it works in the cage? i was told by a friend to by the harness that powers it direct from the battery. i found one with the company i bought my mounting kit from.

[Prairiehammer]

i have not tried that. i will check and see if it works in the cage? i was told by a friend to by the harness that powers it direct from the battery. i found one with the company i bought my mounting kit from.

 

Yes, there is a direct wire to the battery option that utilizes the Garmin cord end for the cradle at one end and a pigtail at the other end for connecting to the battery and there is a black box (electronic transformer) in the middle. Be sure, if you buy one of those, that the Garmin end is for the cradle receptacle (like this) and not for the mini-USB receptacle (like this). While your GPS will run using the USB, the screen will not be bright enough to read outdoors.

[dallio]

my gps is the 260w model. it has the mini-USB port on the back to plug into.

[Prairiehammer]

OK, IC.

[dallio]

this is what i was going to use. can you see any reason why this would not work?

 

http://www.leadermotorcycle.com/mini-usb-battery-harness-60/

[Prairiehammer]

It should work. How much power does your GPS pull? What is the wattage output for the linked harness? Seems like a LOT of money.

[friesman]

When direct wiring my 765t I found that the garmin was a lower voltage than my bike output. I looked on the net and found a power adapter wire kit made especially for the purpose for about 25 bucks. (or buy the cigarette adapter that has the right voltage for your GPS, probably from Garmin)

 

Brian

[StarFan]

I have a Garmin Zumo 550 and am using it on two different bikes with two different power hookups. On my bike in Iceland I have it hooked up straight from the battery with a fuse between the Garmin and the battery. Made a waterproof plug on the cord so I can just unplug it to use it on my other bike (my USA Venture).

On the USA Venture I just use the cigarette lighter plug. Been doing this since 2008 on the Icelandic bike and from 2011 on the USA bike and never had a problem. Am I doing something wrong that can harm the Garmin device ? Would think though the Garmin would be shot now if this is a damaging setup.

Any advice/guidance would be apreciated since I am not very electrical oriented so to speak.

[Guest tx2sturgis]

Garmins use a slightly different mini-USB setup than almost any other device.

 

I suppose they did it that way to make sure that customers had to buy 'official' Garmin power and data cables.

 

Dallio, if you order a cigarette lighter power cable direct from the Garmin website, or use the original that it came with, it should work perfectly..and charge your Garmin from the cigarette lighter socket, assuming its clean inside. They do get dirty on the interior positive contact.

 

Any other charger or data cable you buy from a box store, (even if the connector looks the same), if its not marked as compatible with Garmin, it may or may not work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[reddevilmedic]

I use a garmin car charger on the bike, works fine. it is "stepped down" to around 5 volts with a built in doohicky thingy...obviously not an electrical genius!

[alwrmcusn]

Garmin uses the standard USB 5 volt charging system on their units. Some (i.e. the Nuvi 755) also use a special plug that along with power also includes a method of receiving highway informations such as traffic slowdowns, weather, accidents etc. However not all of the wall or cigarette lighter adapters provide sufficient power to charge the Garmin. I believe it must provide 5 volts at 1000mw. There are a lot of adapters that only output 500mw which Garmin says is insufficient to provide charge/power to the GPS. Many of the adapters will specify that info on the unit but it may be really hard to see. I just had this conversation with Garmin yesterday by coincidence concerning my Nuvi 755.