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GPS Advice?!?

What he said ^^^. :mrgreen:
 
I haven't tethered mine, but I kinda think that it is a good idea. I'll vouch for the fact that the key is hard to keep up wit as evidenced by the fact mine is missing. The 550 cradle I got from Dail actually manages to screw itself into the secured position as I go down the road. I'm going to have to keep up with that key if I want to take it out of it's mount.
 
I drape the tether cord over the mount itself. If the unit were to pop out of the mount, it would hang by the cord. I have NEVER had it pop out of the mount and I never use the screw even though I do have the tool in my pocket all the time. I do the side squeeze thing to make sure it is properly seated. If I am in a place where I am really worried about someone stealing the unit, I just pop it out and take it with me.

One thing I do NOT like about the cradle is that the power cord cannot be unplugged from the cradle. Mine is hardwired to the bike. I could cut the wire and put a plug inline, but I shouldn't have to do that :doh: This is an issue because if I want to remove the cradle and use a different gps/cradle, say for my 60CS backup unit, I have to zip tie the Montana cradle out of the way so I can mount the other cradle on the ram mount.

The dust on the screen thing really hasn't been a big deal to me even though I've ridden in some seriously nasty dust :shrug:
 
One thing I do NOT like about the cradle is that the power cord cannot be unplugged from the cradle. Mine is hardwired to the bike. I could cut the wire and put a plug inline, but I shouldn't have to do that :doh: This is an issue because if I want to remove the cradle and use a different gps/cradle, say for my 60CS backup unit, I have to zip tie the Montana cradle out of the way so I can mount the other cradle on the ram mount.

I run 12v battery power to the handlebars on all bikes, wires terminated in a couple of 2pin SAE plugs. Add SAE plugs to my air pump and GPS cradle and carry a "cigarette lighter" socket with a SAE plug as well. When at home, the SAE plug connects to the battery tender. I can move the Garmin mount to any of the bikes since they all have the SAE plugs. I even plug my electric gloves in when I need them. The system works well.
 
I run 12v battery power to the handlebars on all bikes, wires terminated in a couple of 2pin SAE plugs. Add SAE plugs to my air pump and GPS cradle and carry a "cigarette lighter" socket with a SAE plug as well. When at home, the SAE plug connects to the battery tender. I can move the Garmin mount to any of the bikes since they all have the SAE plugs. I even plug my electric gloves in when I need them. The system works well.

I did the same. The cradle for the 590 is expensive and BULKY and I saw no reason to replicate it on each bike. Cut the cord and put on a SAE plug and now it moves easily (and cheaply) between rides. And like you said JT, the bike plugs are so useful for every thing else like the USB plug I have to charge the phone.
 
I run 12v battery power to the handlebars on all bikes, wires terminated in a couple of 2pin SAE plugs. Add SAE plugs to my air pump and GPS cradle and carry a "cigarette lighter" socket with a SAE plug as well. When at home, the SAE plug connects to the battery tender. I can move the Garmin mount to any of the bikes since they all have the SAE plugs. I even plug my electric gloves in when I need them. The system works well.

Yeah, I just got lazy. The 600 mount was put on the bike in a hurry because I was leaving town and it was the first mount ever put on the bike. So I just wired it straight to the battery so I could get out of town. I've just never taken the time to go back and redo it.
 
Yeah, I just got lazy. The 600 mount was put on the bike in a hurry because I was leaving town and it was the first mount ever put on the bike. So I just wired it straight to the battery so I could get out of town. I've just never taken the time to go back and redo it.

In the race to be lazy, I just added a SAE plug on the last GPS mount and ran the wire and plugged it into the battery tender SAE that the prior owner had installed on the WR. The wire ran outside of the gas tank and connected to that plug. Excess wire was zip-tied to the bars. Gaffer's tape was involved at one time to keep the wire attached to the tank. It looked about as redneck as it sounds. This time I'm going to actually install something correctly. I do like JT's approach of an SAE plug on the bars. What would be nice is some sort of dash to mount all this too. But that takes some engineering and fabrication that it seems I never have the time for.
 
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