I've been using a Garmin on my bike and have it plugged into a "Battery Tender" brand power cord, the type with the big round automotive style power outlet so that the Garmin power cord can be used.  The problem is that the Garmin periodically shuts down and restarts, sometimes incessantly and sometimes hardly at all.  And it does this even when it is fully charged.  It doesn't do that when used in a car.  I've checked and rechecked the connection to the bike's battery, looked for shorts, I've taped the plug on the Garmin to the outlet thinking it might be vibrating loose, nothing seems to help.

I have to run the Garmin at full screen brightness on the bike and that runs its' battery down fairly quickly so it has to be plugged in to a power source in order to last for the duration of a ride.  I'm wondering if maybe the charging circuit for the battery has something to do with it but the power cord (with an inline fuse) is bolted directly into the battery terminals. I use the Garmin on my Guzzi as it is the bike I use on longer rides.  Anyway, I don't understand what is going on and I'm hoping you guys can help me out.

Oldfeller:

He isn't using the Battery Tender to power the Garmin.....he is using the Battery Tender pigtail that is connected to his battery to provide the power to the Garmin (using it as his power connection).

Engineer:

There are a couple things it could be.  The connector that plugs into the back of the Garmin could be allowing momentary power loss when the bike hits bumps......or there could be voltage spikes that are causing you Garmin to do weird things (this is not likely as the battery is a pretty good buffer against large spikes in voltage).

Since the Battery Tender is routed directly to the battery....I doubt that it is any wiring harness related issue.  Do you have a second Battery Tender pigtail to try?

Thanks Yoshi, that could definitely be the problem because the wind hits it and its' lead and might be wiggling it about and breaking contact.  I'll try taping it down so it can't move.  That is the one thing I didn't test for.

Dave, I do use the charging pigtail for my power connection because it already has a built in fuse holder.  I probably shouldn't have mentioned Battery Tender because that confused the issue.

engineer

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Yoshi wrote on 02/15/18 at 17:32:48:


Ditto. My older model Garmin that has the power plug in the rear and PC port on the side did the same thing. Started crapping out and I ended up finding that something went awry with the rear port. Not a big loss for a $20 used GPS off of fleabay as it lasted me a couple of years. I just went after another newer one for $40 with lifetime maps, bigger screen in near mint condition.

My Garmin doesn't have the traffic function, so I can use any chord.

The only issue/problem I have with the short chord.....is that the Garmin sees it as a computer connection.  So it tries to connect with the computer, which results in a minute of wasted GPS time each time you power it up.