Recommend a decent Sat Nav?

[GringoRojo]

my garmin zumo 660 comes with a cover for the mount - the electrodes might short out if wet & also start to corrode.

[Lonewolf]

For Peejay.........
That's what I thought, but apparently it was draining the battery. As part of the sat nav wiring there is a little black box attached and this was deemed to be the cause of the problem, albeit draining slowly. On a daily basis you don't notice as the battery charges up under use but leave it a while, say 2 weeks, and it flattens.
Now the same wire is controlled by a switched circuit, problem sorted 

[peejay]

That's interesting. My Zumo 550 wiring has a plug on one end to fit in to the sat nav mount, an inline fuse and two wires to connect to the battery.

[Bracechenko]

Well all sorted now, hooked up and ready to go with a Garmin Zumo 550 

Peejay - Nice meeting you today mate and thanks again for fitting it for me whilst I stood around gawping and doing bugger all! Top man :thumbup

Europe is 1 step closer 

[pitternator]

Brace
I bought a 550 zumo 2 yrs ago, new , but from a cheap e bay seller. My history is one of pure sat nav luddism, brought on by several yrs of riding with idiots who couldnt use sat nav properly.I dismissed sat navs as pretty useless then, because of the mistakes their users were making. Today I wont go touring without it, its not 100% foolproof, but has proven itself so many times over on the continent. In particular -
1.finding fuel, lodgings. its great. Just watch out for petrol stations which have gone out of business.They will still be on the database.
2. navigating to a specific point in  a big city- something its almost imposs to do with a map.
3. You can program a touring  route from your PC and the unit will follow it , rather than just getting the sat nav to decide the route- invaluable on " biking roads" , as sat nav always try to avoid such slow meandring roads !  so if you are following a bike friendly route, you just concentrate on reading the road, the sat nav keeps you on track.Invaluable in mountain areas.

problems I have had are few. There does seem to be some " dead" areas , particularly in germany. In saarbrucken the unit just froze up going through the city. Inexplicable, as it worked fine outside the city ! It also went dead  going through a village in central germany. Yet at all other times its never done this. Its possible its a glitch in the mapping database.I also now have a small amount of corrosion on the gold terminals at the base of the unit after several very wet days on last yrs tour.Its caused  a couple of loss of power moments.I have tried to clean them up, and so far its been OK.I think if I had used  a car type in such conditions it would have died completely .
I am not fully convinced of using car type navs in bags on bikes. Last yr lads on my tour had them, but found them really awkward to use, often couldnt see the screen, had to stop to do anything with them...and generally left me to navigate with my trusty zumo. Bike specific nav units are made for the job, I would get one rather than a cheap car unit.If its in ones budget.

[Bracechenko]

Cheers Pitt, that does fill me with confidence and definately intend on loading up with biker routes beforehand. That was a concern as I guessed the sat nav on route would go for motorway type roads.

It does look and feel like a good piece of kit, i'm just busting to get over there now but need to curb it as there's 6 mths to go LOL!!  :rolleyes

[pitternator]

Brace
I do take maps as a fallback , just in case !  I  also wonder if a modern phone with sat nav app would be a good emergency substitute too,and worth taking.

The other thing the zumo can do if its your bag, is store music on a SD card, so you can listen to music as you ride.
I think its a good idea for long motorway stretches, but have not found  a decent helmet speaker system yet to avoid wind noise drowning out the sound at 70 plus.At lower speeds , like in towns, mountains etc, I dont like the distraction !

[ZiggyCol]

Autocom system with helmet speakers and wearing ear plugs works for me

[dolau]

I have a Medion GoPal for the car with a 5" screen which just fits in the £20 Givi waterproof handlebar mounted zip up bag

The Medion does 44 countries and has brillainat graphics for £150 or so so I can see where I am going or plug headphones/bluetooth in for sound and MP3 playing

Just sorting out my 12v socket On my FZS6 with the battery under the seat it was easy to do. With the FZ6S2 with the battery under the tabk it will take me a little longer to sort- well thats what the winter weekend are for isnt it?